St. Louis is officially moving away from single-stream recycling.
Col. Ben Jonsson, the city’s chief operating officer, presented a replacement plan for alley collection to members of the aldermanic Public Infrastructure and Utilities committee Thursday. It will be rolled out in its entirety within a year.
Mayor Cara Spencer’s administration has been telegraphing the move since May, when former interim streets director Jim Sulemann called for the end of alley recycling at a Budget and Public Employees committee.
The key problem with alley recycling is contamination. More than 50% of material collected through all methods — roll carts, alley dumpsters and drop-off sites — between January and May of this year was rejected at a local recycling center for that reason. That meant the city paid a more expensive recycling fee without getting any of the benefits.
But when the city looked at data for two weeks in July, when recycling was collected from roll carts and drop-off sites alone, the contamination rate dropped to 25% or less.
Within the next 90 days, the city will expand the number of recycling drop-off sites, with the goal of having a location within a mile of every resident. The blue alleyway bins will be treated as regular dumpsters. The city will also spend the next three months auditing refuse collection and billing, in an effort to bring in more funding for waste pick-up.
The entire rollout of a new modern trash collection process should take place by August of 2026, and would include plenty of opportunities for feedback, Jonsson said.
The city rolled out single-stream recycling in 2011, part of a legislative package that included a $11 increase in a resident’s trash bill. But in recent years, it has been forced to pause the program for extended periods. A staffing shortage led to a roughly one-year halt during the pandemic. And after the May 16 tornado, refuse workers began commingling trash, yard waste and recycling in order to free up resources to collect storm debris.
