Taylor Bridges
Sat, Aug 9 at 2:06 PM
- Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
- 18 Aug 2025
The Fayetteville City Council hastily voted to change from one of the best curbside recycling programs in the United States to singlestream recycling. This was after paying over $111,000 to Raftelis Financial Consultants for a trash collection rate study, with obvious holes in its data, such as:
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• How did they estimate how many new customers would recycle?
• How did they estimate a contamination rate of less than 10%? Other area cities have a rate above 40%?
• In the report, an 80% recycling rate was used. On what basis? The only other cities in the U.S. reporting those participation numbers have mandatory recycling, zero waste plans, violation fines, etc.
• How did they develop cost estimates? Requests for proposals will have to be gathered before costs are determined. Glass is said to be collected separately, at what cost? What are the projected charges for Fayetteville using the material recovery facility, or MRF, or outside haulers?
Much was discussed about worker safety, but better trucks/systems for the existing program to reduce those risks weren’t included. What is the MRF injury rate? Are we transferring injuries from Fayetteville to the MRF?
The key benefit the city highlighted is increased participation by apartments and businesses to provide recycling, but those services already exist on an optional basis. Why not make it mandatory to provide them?
The city has said cardboard that can’t fit into the new carts will require the driver to manually collect those materials. And if the company selected to separate materials doesn’t recycle glass, the city may face collecting glass items separately using the existing green bins and collected by a different truck. Doesn’t that negate worker risk/injury improvements the city touted for its new approach?
How will they ensure traceability to ensure recyclables don’t end up in the landfill, as happened with Fort Smith? Since the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled cities can dump recyclables in landfills if the recycling and trash rates are combined on your bill (like Fayetteville’s) rather than itemized, how can we know that won’t happen here?
Things just don’t add up. The City Council members ignored public outcry, did not answer questions and ignored local experts’ pleas to table the vote. Now that they have voted to implement single stream, they will spend over $2 million from reserves on a program that was rushed through.
This was a rate study, which normally would be used to craft a master plan, as was done in 2017. Instead, they approved the rate study as single-stream implementation.
It’s high time for a recycling transparency ordinance with legal teeth and accountability.
Council member Teresa Turk got the agenda item to purchase single-stream trucks taken off the consent agenda this week. It will be on the Aug. 19 meeting agenda. She also added a resolution seeking a new or updated recycling/ trash master plan, to address remaining questions and questionable data. People should contact City Council members and show up Aug. 19 to voice their concerns.
TAYLOR BRIDGES Bella Vista