Lockport Union-Sun & Journal — Two Niagara County towns that don’t have contracts with Modern Corporation also are looking at every-other-week recycling collection.

A report in the US&J last week looked at the state of negotiations between Modern and seven towns and cities that are looking at every-other-week (EOW) recycling as a way to cut municipal refuse collection costs.

Towns including Somerset, Wilson, Royalton and Pendleton have acquired, or are in the process of acquiring, 64-gallon, wheeled, lidded recycling “carts” to replace the standard 18-gallon green or blue tote; and are going with less-frequent collection of recyclables.

In every case, Modern is poised to get a larger stream of recyclable materials to run through its new Buffalo processing plant, and municipalities are cutting collection and landfilling costs, which ultimately are paid by property owners. 

Basically, the more residents recycle, the less they’re shipping off to the Modern landfill, and so the less the town or refuse district will be charged in per-ton landfill “tipping” fees. That’s where the bulk of promised savings comes from. Some additional savings comes from quarterly “rebates” that Modern is paying its clients based on volume of recyclables it’s collecting.

The towns of Lockport and Hartland are having a look at a similar arrangement with their waste haulers.

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In the Town of Lockport, officials’ talks with Waste Management Inc. are just beginning and are focused several large-cart recycling scenarios, Supervisor Marc Smith said.

Waste Management has been asked to provide the dimensions of a cart that its “one-armed bandit,” or semi-automated recycling truck, can handle, with the thought that residents could buy their own carts, at Home Depot or another area retail store. Voluntarily, then, residents could recycle more, throw away less and help cut the town’s tipping costs.

Lockport also will have a look at the benefits of requiring, and supplying, large recycling carts for all households, Smith said late last week. If the promise of townwide savings is born out in the numbers, the town could pursue modification of its five-year contract with Waste Management, which is in effect through 2015.

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In the Town of Hartland, Supervisor Ross Annable has a call in to Allied Waste Service, whose BFI Waste Recovery unit processes recyclables from the town, about recycling alternatives the town could get in on now without incurring new costs.

The town is in the second year of a three-year pact with Allied that lowered property owners’ annual refuse fees substantially, Annable said.

Every-other-week, large-cart recycling definitely will be “looked at” when the town solicits haulers’ offers on a new multi-year pickup contract for Hartland, he added.

“It’s the wave of the future. We’re all going to be there, eventually.”

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The Town of Cambria’s refuse and recycling hauler, Modern Corporation, has been advised the town will not negotiate for every-other-week recycling pickup for a while.

That’s because the town recently bought 1,500 new 18-gallon recycling totes for homeowners and can’t just discard them unused, Supervisor Wright Ellis said Monday.

After two years of trying, the town is in line to get a grant from the state to reimburse half the cost of those totes, which were bought to replace residents’ banged-up and duct-taped old totes.

Meanwhile, Modern’s EOW recycling program is only about a year old.

“Our timing was really — off, I guess is the term,” Ellis said. “We’re really in no position” to change recycling programs now. 

The town does not charge a fee for recycling totes and residents can have more than one if they need it, Ellis noted.