LOCKPORT — A refuse and recycling “show and tell” event Wednesday did more to explain the coming variable cart refuse collection program to city residents than any amount of words in flyers, newspapers or TV shows.

Interviews with a sampling of the 450 or so people who showed up at City Hall throughout the day, to learn more about the new Modern way of refuse and recycling, turned up a sense of relief by residents. What they’ve been reading about, or hearing by word of mouth, isn’t as complicated as they’d feared, some said.

Ute and Dieter Pollman of DeSales Circle spent a half-hour reading literature, checking out the small, medium and large refuse totes and talking to Modern and city representatives about the program.

By candidates for city offices particularly, much has been made of how senior citizens will handle the wheeled carts that everyone has to use. Uncontained bags require one trip to the curb only, but the carts require two or more trips, and even emptied they’re not precisely lightweight, critics point out.

How seniors feel about the carts depends on the individual. To be sure, some do worry they’ll be unwieldy and inconvenient. Dieter Pollman of DeSales Circle, who’s always put bags out to the curb uncontained, isn’t one of them.

“These carts are OK,” he said. “There are lots of communities all over the country, and overseas, that have the same thing. We’ll be fine with them.”

Helen, a North Adam Street resident who didn’t want to give her last name, isn’t so sure. One trip to the curb and back per week is enough for an eighty-something, she said. Having carts means two trips, one to dispose of waste and another to retrieve the refuse cart. Using the recycling cart means still more trips, and that’s not a pleasant thought, especially during the winter. Maybe she’ll just chuck her recyclables in the garbage, she said, or put the recycling cart out only when it’s full and not snowy outside.

“It’s not that I’m against recycling, I just don’t want to have to go out and get these things when the weather’s bad, I just don’t,” Helen said.

Then, with a cheerful wink, she suggested, “This all sounds worse than it really is. Older people are just set in their ways. We don’t like change.”



Hands-on acquaintance helps

Barbara Scirto Sullivan came out to inspect the carts and decide which size would be best for her family’s Walnut Street property, which has two businesses and one apartment unit. As she inspected, she fired off her miscellaneous questions about the program: could multiple units share a cart if that’s practical? What happens if you pick the wrong size cart? Can snowbirds get fee relief?

As she looked for the right people to ask, Sullivan grabbed a cart by its handle, rocked it back and forth, and declared, “well, it’s better than dragging (a can) out to the curb. ... This is coming, ready or not, so we may as well look on the bright side.”

She and Diane Voelker of Grant Street agreed the biggest problem with the city’s rollout of the program is that the real need-to-know info has been late in coming. There’s been much talk of, and reporting on, the program as a theory or a proposal — but not enough explanation to people how their habits are affected and what it’s going to cost.

The show-and-tell event, with its visuals, demos, handouts and chances to put hands on the carts, went a long way toward filling in the blanks, they said.

“The not knowing is what’s scaring people and getting them up in arms,” Sullivan said. “I’m more comfortable now.”

“This is what we needed,” Voelker said. Of the program generally, she added, “I suppose it’s all right. People just need more information.”

A two-thirds filled, 64-gallon recycling cart was wheeled around the parking lot and people were encouraged to poke through the contents and see what all can go into it. Cardboard — even pizza boxes, ice cream boxes, egg crates, coffee cups — was in there, mixed with newsprint and ditto paper, plastic berry boxes, yogurt containers, milk jugs, cans and bottles, metal lids and caps, all in a jumble because no sorting by material type is needed. About the only material that Modern won’t take for recycling is styrofoam, according to company representative Joe Hickman.



‘Learning curve’ is expected

Dawn Timm, the Niagara County employee who’s advising the city’s transition to private trash hauling with curbside recycling, said the two most frequently asked questions she fielded Wednesday concerned yard waste and handling of the carts in the snow.

Yard waste was an easy one to answer. The city is preparing an annual calendar to show yard waste (leaf and brush) collection days, with the collecting to be done by city employees. People can still rake their leaves into the street for once-a-year autumn pickup.

Questions about cart handling in the snow were a bit trickier to field.

There’s been quite a bit of chatter about the city’s proposed rule requiring people to place their carts 3 feet from the street edge, so that Modern’s automated cart lifter can grab the carts from the street. The carts have to be placed a certain way so the truck driver doesn’t have to get out of the truck and handle them — automation being a cost-cutter for the company and, therefore, its customers.

Placing carts properly when rights-of-way are snow-filled will be a real chore, some residents said. They’re concerned what will happen if the carts can’t be set in exactly the right spot, or they end up covered with snow by Mother Nature or a snow plow. Will they still be picked up? Will people get written up for violations?

The placement rules “will make it harder, more work for us,” said 83-year-old Emilio D’Amico of DeSales Circle. “I like (the recycling component), but I don’t like this big bin; it’s a waste, a lot of baloney, I think.”

Modern is prepared for some manual chucking of carts where the prescribed placement arrangement doesn’t work, Timm has said.

And when snowbanks pose a challenge and it’d make more sense to set the cart on your driveway, that’s OK, she added Wednesday; aiming for the three-foot spacing so the truck’s automated arm can grab it is the important thing.

“If you put it in the driveway in the morning, that’s where you’ll find it when you come home at the end of the day,” she said.

Administration has no plans to send “the garbage police” after residents who don’t do everything right, city officials stressed repeatedly.

“There’s a learning curve for everyone here, it’s new to us all. There will be some bumps in the road, for the first month especially, I’m sure,” Mayor Michael Tucker said.