Recycling pickup missed in St. Paul? Contractor says they're working on it

St. Paul's recycling contractor says it's finally getting a handle on problems with the city's new collection system, after St. Paul switched in January from small curbside bins to large wheeled carts that are generally picked up in alleys.

The transition has not been smooth.

Last month the city of St. Paul started a new, five-year contract with Eureka Recycling — a Twin Cities nonprofit. By replacing tiny overflowing bins with spacious blue carts, city leaders hope to dramatically increase the amount of waste diverted from landfills.

For Eureka, the entire collection method changed.

Workers used to stop at the curb in front of each home, get out of the truck, dump the bin and move on. But now, they pick up carts from alleys in the back. The trucks have mechanical arms that grab and dump the carts, provided residents position them in the right place.

But for the last three weeks, St. Paul City Council Member Chris Tolbert says missed recycling pickup has been the No. 1 complaint of his Highland Park and Mac-Groveland constituents.

"We shouldn't be apologizing. Eureka should be apologizing. Eureka did not plan ahead for this. These problems should have been identified first," Tolbert said. "And I think Eureka needs to get together and figure out how to resolve this and how to resolve it quickly."

Tolbert further warned if the problems continue after the first 90 days of the contract, the city will reduce Eureka's payments, and could terminate the agreement entirely.

Eureka co-president Kate Davenport says the firm is making progress toward resolving the problems. She says switching to alley pickup meant redesigning routes. And early on, drivers missed some homes because the city's electronic map data was incomplete.

"Whenever you're routing something, and you're connecting alleys to the curb, you have to have the centerline data for both in order to link those together and effectively route. And so the original data that we got didn't have that alley centerline data."

Davenport says Eureka had to work with a mapping company to sort out that problem. Others cropped up too.

"Some people hadn't gotten their carts yet. Some people weren't in the dataset that we received when we routed. Some people may have had difficult or challenging alleys to access and we had to reroute them, and so that resulted in a delay in pickup."

Davenport says those situations accounted for 20 to 25 percent of the problems. But the majority involved residents not knowing when and where to put out their carts.

She says the number of missed pickups continues to shrink. And as of this week, Davenport says drivers have been completing their daily routes.

Despite the problems, St. Paul's Public Works Department says the new system is getting people to recycle more. As of Monday, Eureka has picked up 1,292 tons of material — a 19 percent increase over the same time last year.