By Rachel Lippmann, St. Louis Public Radio
St. Louis – The city of St. Louis says it will have all the dumpsters and roll carts in place for its new recycling program by the end of March.
That's later than officials were expecting to completely implement the city's new single-stream recycling program, which is funded by the $11-a-month trash fee added to water bills in July.
"We actually changed the design of our carts and our equipment and we're modifying about 20 piece of equipment so we can handle a different cart that's more economical," said city streets director Todd Waelterman. "So that kind of delayed us a little bit."
Waelterman said demand for the program also increased as he spoke to aldermen, so the department needs double the number of new dumpsters and roll carts.
The increased interest did not surprise Mayor Francis Slay, who said he was excited about the new program.
"When I first started I had a few items in a little bin," Slay said. "As you start getting used to recycling, you're finding more and more things you can put in. We actually put in some cases more things in the recycle bin than we do in just the garbage bin."
Streets department employees finished installing blue dumpsters in the 8th and 15th wards in South City, and the 28th Ward in the Central West End, on Wednesday. Customers who use roll carts for trash in those wards will receive their recycling carts by next week.
"Everybody says why'd you start there?" Waelterman said. "Well, we started in the 28th because they had the most people currently participating, and we moved down the line on how many people in each ward were participating and how much support we had for the neighborhood."
Aldermen received $100,000 to implement the program how they wanted in their ward. Waelterman said the city installed 31 additional drop-off sites in wards that chose to use the funds to crack down on illegal dumping.
The streets department will eventually deploy 30,000 blue dumpsters and 10,000 roll carts. Waelterman said he hopes demand will increase enough that the city has to start painting old brown dumpsters blue and use them for recyclables.
For a full list of accepted recycling materials, go here: