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Waste Management will be the city of Houghton’s service provider for curbside recycling.
The decision was made at the city council’s regular meeting on Wednesday.
Several community members at the meeting stressed their desire to see recyclables placed in bins or carts as opposed to bags.
Commercial recycling had also been called for but Houghton City Manager Eric Waara says this is a good plan for the city to start with.
Waara said, “For years, we’ve been hearing how you can’t do recycling here and we’re going to be doing it here going forward. Now, it’s certainly not a perfect system in many people’s eyes, but the way we’ve looked at it, we’ve got something that we can grow. Right now it’s financially sustainable for us, so it’s certainly a system we can grow going forward and possibly expand our service, enhance the service going forward, but you’ve got to walk before you learn to run.”
Waste Management will provide weekly single-stream curbside recycling, in addition to the same trash services currently provided, for about $2.00 more per customer per month.
Waara recommended that those costs be offset through an increase in the base fee of 50 cents and bag prices raised to $1.30 for large and 65 cents for small.
The service is expected to be available starting in July.
