City Scraps Parking Ban for Automated Recycling Process

Officials at city hall have come up with a plan that will allow residents to drop all of their recycling into a big blue bin and set it on the street.

Without requiring a parking ban.

So long, blue bags.

Hello, blue bins.

City officials have OK’d a $1.5 million plan that would switch the city’s recycling collection to an automated process, complete with new trucks and large blue bins.

The city of Lakewood is expected to begin a “structured rollout” of its new refuse and recycling program. The city could begin distributing the first 6,000 bins — out of a total 15,000 — by this fall.

“We sure saved a lot of the controversy and got this done without the parking ban,” said Ward 3 councilman Shawn Juris, who heads up council’s public works committee.

“Some folks will never like change, but I think this one is for the best.”

According to LoveLakewood.com, the city would permit can in the street as early as 6 p.m. the day before collection, which could essentially keep residents from parking in those spots anyway.

City council’s public works committee continued its discussion on the topic at a last Monday’s meeting, even though the city administration really didn’t need council’s stamp of approval.

“The refuse and recycling department has done an incredible amount of due diligence,” said Juris.

“We tried to vet this out as much as we could. We identified some of the goals that we shot for without putting parking restrictions attached.”

One of the ideas that came out of the discussions, Juris said, is placing the bins on the street “so the cans do not end up behind a car and the refuse department can pick it up without being restricted.”

In an effort to streamline waste collection — and save money in the long run — city officials are eyeing a plan to begin distributing plastic recycling containers to residents.

The plan would be implemented in phases, and spread out around the city to begin.

The cost is an estimated $53 for each of the 18,000 containers. The city would also need at least two additional large trucks, at about $250,000 each.

However, city officials have said the move could save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars each year — through saved labor costs and fewer workers’ compensation claims as well as income from the recycled materials.

In a nutshell, the city receives money for recycled materials and pays to send stuff to a landfill. 

Juris said the plan is to have the program pay for itself between four and seven years.

“By automating, we’re still going to be able to create a leaner and more effective system in both refuse and recycling,” he said.

“This is going to work.”