Jefferson residents will get the opportunity to recycle in a different way later this year.

The City Council approved a resolution at their February 13th meeting to issue $1.7 million in general obligation bonds to purchase two sanitation trucks and resurface East Lincoln Way. City Administrator Scott Peterson says one of the sanitation trucks will be automated for recycling. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio this means that the city will shift to single stream recycling, where residents will get a 65-gallon green recycling cart that they can place all of their recyclables into without having to sort the items.

“Then the automated truck comes by, picks up the bin, dumps it into our truck. We are taking it to a new processing facility, it’s Metro Waste (Authority), and then the facility is located in Grimes. So we take our truck down there and then it’s unloaded down there where it’s sorted at their facility.”  

Peterson points out that while most of the recyclables will be taken to Metro Waste Authority, cardboard will continue to be transported to the recycling site in Carroll. He explains why that decision was made.

“Just by the vast differences in quantity between cardboard and everything else. And in rough terms, we have four times more cardboard than we would have anything else, as far as weight of recyclables.”  

The estimated cost for the new automated truck is $387,500 from Elliott Equipment Company, along with $22,800 for 1,500 new carts. The other rear-loading truck will cost an estimated $228,800 that will be used for commercial routes. Peterson expects to begin this new recycling process later this summer.