Residents and metropolis councilors in Medford are expressing outrage over a plan to roll again trash service to as soon as each two weeks, as Massachusetts environmentalists think about a statewide ban on residential meals waste disposal.
Medford officers say they’re ready to implement biweekly waste assortment in July 2027, following pointers they assert have been labored on through the years. The plan, although, has generated sharp backlash from residents and metropolis councilors who argue that the rollback ought to be deserted.
Critics are taking exception to how Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn and different officers formally introduced the scale-back from the present weekly trash assortment.
Officers issued a press launch on Nov. 13 highlighting how town secured a $200,000 grant from the state Division of Environmental Safety to assist its so-called “zero waste” initiatives.
The discharge coated how the grant is the second that the state DEP has issued to town to buy curbside organics assortment carts. In 2024, the state helped launch Medford’s residential compost assortment program.
Metropolis Council President Zac Bears is slamming officers for “burying the lead,” because the transfer to biweekly assortment wasn’t talked about till the underside half of the discharge.
“We’re not seeing any of the benchmarks that would lead us to believe that this is a good change,” Bears mentioned ultimately week’s council assembly. “And I think to have not laid that groundwork … and the fact that this was not the lead of the press release … has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.”
“I think it’s set up this program for failure because I think there’s no trust in it,” the council president added.
Underneath the brand new service, residential 64-gallon trash carts will likely be collected each different week, together with recycling at no cost, starting in July 2027. Officers say the baseline will “equate to 32 gallons per household per week.” Residents might proceed to lease extra 64-gallon trash and 96-gallon recycling carts.
That service quantity, officers say, meets the state’s standards for the DEP’s “Pay As You Throw” program, making town eligible for the grants.
Transferring to a biweekly assortment would save town over $1 million per yr at a time disposal prices are rising, in keeping with estimates.
“We know that most of what we throw away isn’t trash, most of it is compostable and recyclable,” Public Works Commissioner Tim McGivern acknowledged within the launch.
“So we are changing the structure of Medford’s collection program,” he added, “to prioritize composting and recycling. By keeping food waste separate, we will also keep our recyclables cleaner so that more of them will actually be recycled.”
The controversy in Medford, a metropolis of roughly 60,000, comes because the state DEP is contemplating a two-stage growth of the state’s food-waste disposal ban.
Within the first stage, officers want to implement a ban on industrial meals waste disposal as early as 2028. That would then be adopted by a ban on residential meals waste, no earlier than November 2030.
However for both of these to return to fruition, officers have mentioned there have to be an in depth interval of public suggestions.
A Medford process pressure shaped in 2022 developed pointers that may result in more practical trash assortment providers, Steve Smirti, town’s director of communications, advised the Herald on Saturday. The physique had a consensus that town needed to “reduce trash volume, make curbside composting more accessible, and reduce the wear and tear on our roads,” he mentioned.
“To do this,” Smirti mentioned, “the Task Force … recommended the eventual transition to every other week trash collection and the implementation of a free curbside composting program. For financial and environmental reasons, especially, the Mayor agreed.”
Metropolis Councilor Equipment Collins, a member of that process pressure, mentioned the rollback shocked even her, particularly within the method it was introduced.
“I had no idea that this was how the administration was planning to roll out this change,” she mentioned, “because so many of our conversations were really guided by the fact that any major change involving our recycling, our compost, or our trash pickup would need to be preceded by such thorough outreach into the community to really get people on board.”
The pushback has prompted officers to “refocus” their “communication strategy on education and soliciting public feedback to help identify specific challenges faced by our residents.”
“The Mayor believes that the Council is on board with this plan,” Smirti mentioned, “as they voted for the contract in 2023 knowing that the every other week trash program was being developed.”
“But after public input and outreach,” he added, “if they want to pivot from this plan … the Mayor will certainly work with them.”
Medford resident Cheryl Rodriguez is warning officers that she fears biweekly trash assortment would end in circumstances that close by cities and cities skilled throughout a summer-long trash strike.
“What Malden looked like during the trash strike will become our new normal,” Rodriguez mentioned. “Biweekly trash pickup is disgusting and irresponsible. We should not encourage our rat population to grow.”
