Republic backs off changes to garbage pickup

Friday, April 22, 2005 | 11:17 a.m.

Republic Services has backed off an idea to cut back garbage pickup to once a week and increase recycling, Bob Coyle, area president of the company, said today.

Instead, Coyle said he would be studying the idea of increasing recycling by itself. It's "back to the drawing board," Coyle said.

Coyle said the now-trashed earlier idea was "not a plan or a proposal, but just a concept." It came out of focus groups the company had done with residents in the Las Vegas Valley, he said.

The idea involved picking up trash once a week, instead of twice, and picking up recyclable materials such as bottles, cans and newspapers, once a week, instead of twice a month.

But the "concept" was made public via the media and there was a public outcry against any reduction in garbage collection.

"Clearly I have a lot of egg on my face," Coyle said.

He said the idea came from answers local residents gave to focus group questions about recycling.

"They said they would like to do it more often, have it be more convenient and have more capacity" for recyclables.

Under the concept, Republic was to have provided area residents with 95-gallon containers for recycling, which would have replaced the three, 12-gallon crates residents currently use.

"As we have seen all the controversy, I've gone back and thought about other concepts," Coyle said.

He said the company would take up to four months to finish an economic analysis of increasing recycling to once a week.

"It becomes a study of the economics of how many more trucks, how many more people. We have to see how the economics pencil out."

Republic Services has a contract with all area municipalities that extends until 2035.

Clark County has long fallen short of a statewide goal set in 1991 to recycle 25 percent of solid waste by 1996. By late last year, Nevada had barely topped 10 percent, compared to about 30 percent nationwide.

Timonie Hood, environmental protection specialist for the Environmental Protection Agency, southwestern region, said this morning that Nevada is "still lagging behind the rest of the country" when it comes to recycling.

"In California, many communities exceed 50 percent."

She also said that many communities nationwide have adopted the very model Republic Services was looking at without any problem.