SCRR, Sebastopol's new garbage hauler, answers questions from the public
Some answers about your future garbage service
On Tuesday, April 29, Sebastopol’s new garbage hauler, Sonoma County Resource Recovery (SCRR), held a public meeting at the Sebastopol Youth Annex so that people with questions about their new garbage service could get their questions answered.
Interestingly, only seven members of the public showed up to the meeting, This is surprising given what a hot issue this was at council meetings earlier in the year.
“Maybe it’s all kind of died down a little bit,” SCRR’s Administrative Operations Manager Alissa Johnson said hopefully.
Councilmember Sandra Maurer agreed that members of the public were outnumbered by the folks from SCRR and the city of Sebastopol.
“[From SCRR], there were two customer service reps, their general manager, their president, their outreach specialist, and their project manager,” Maurer said. “From the city, the mayor, Councilmember Hinton and I were there, along with the acting city manager [Mary Gourley].”
Maurer attributed the low turnout to the extensive outreach that SCRR has already done around town over the last few months, particularly with local businesses and apartment complexes, which will see the largest rate increases.
Maurer is a member of the council’s Solid Waste Ad Hoc Committee. The vehemence of the public’s response earlier this year to the switch from Recology to SCRR surprised and disappointed her. As a member of the Ad Hoc, she and Councilmember Jill McLewis had worked for months with the city’s consultant R3 to choose what they saw as the best garbage service for the town.
What you need to know about SCRR’s service
Maurer, who is a meticulous note-taker, highlighted several points that she thought residents would be interested in knowing. (This reporter was attending another event that evening, but the Sebastopol Times interviewed several people who were at the SCRR meeting.) The following information comes from Maurer’s notes and the PowerPoint presentation that SCRR gave on Tuesday evening. (You can find a link to that presentation at the end of this article.)
CONTACT INFO: “First of all, I wanted the public to know the phone number and the email on how to contact SCRR,” Maurer said.
SCRR’s telephone number is 707-795-7470.
Email them at info@sonomacorr.com.
They are open Monday through Friday, 8 am to 5 pm.
Visit their website at sonomacorr.com.
The new outreach coordinator is Amanda Rivers. Amanda will talk to residents and businesses about how they can reduce the amount of trash they create. She is SCRR’s version of Recology’s popular ambassador Ambrosia Thomson.
BILLING: Most residents will be billed quarterly, and they should expect their first bill from SCRR in July, which will cover July, August and September. Multifamily residences and businesses will be billed monthly, and they should expect their first bill in August.
OF CARTS, BINS AND BOXES: Carts are made of plastic, and they roll—this is what most residents and some small businesses have. There are four sizes of carts:
20-gallon: holds 1-1.5 garbage bags
32-gallon: holds 2-3 garbage bags
64-gallon: holds 4-5 garbage bags
96-gallon: holds 7-8 garbage bags
Bins are larger and made of metal. These are what many businesses that have larger waste needs use. Boxes are 20 feet long and hold 10 yards or more of waste.
Maurer noted that all residents will also get a compost pail for their kitchen. “It’s basically a way for you to take your compost from your kitchen to your green cart,” she said.
In terms of carts and bins, how is the changeover from Recology to SCRR going to happen? According to Maurer, “This is going to be a coordinated effort between Recology and SCRR. It’s going to start on June 9, and it should end by June 20.” During this time, Recology will be picking up their carts and bins, and SCRR will be delivering theirs.”
If you don’t have three new carts from SCRR by June 20—garbage (black), recycling (blue), green waste and compost (green)— you need to call SCRR at 707-795-7470. If Recology hasn’t picked up their bins by that point, you need to call Recology at 1-800-243-0291.
WHAT GOES WHERE: SCRR has handouts about what goes where, in terms of compost/green waste (which they call “organics”), recycling, and landfill. One thing to note is that the so-called “compostable plastic” bags you get at the grocery store don’t go in with the compost; they go into the black bin headed for the landfill because, according to Maurer, “they break down into a kind of goo that you don’t want in compost.”
BIG ITEM PICKUP: You can schedule two big-item pickups a year. At the meeting, Councilmember Neysa Hinton asked how long it took to schedule a big-item pickup from call to pickup. The answer was about one week.
CHRISTMAS TREE PICKUP: After Christmas, SCRR offers automatic curbside pickup of Christmas trees for a certain window of time. For those of you who like to keep your tree up for a long time, such that you miss the window for curbside tree pickup, you can call and schedule a tree pickup — and that won’t be considered one of your two big-item pickups.
CARDBOARD: For businesses that deal with a lot of cardboard from deliveries, SCRR is doing a special cardboard pickup route, but businesses also have the option of taking extra cardboard to the city of Sebastopol’s cardboard collection container by the Sebastopol Youth Annex. “It’s huge,” Maurer said, noting that SCRR requests that you break the boxes down and flatten them before you toss them in.
REDUCING WASTE AT ITS SOURCE: Maurer said that SCRR emphasizes reducing waste at the source, rather than composting and recycling. “So the old model is more compost, more recycling as a measure of achievement, but that is outdated,” she said. “We want to really reduce waste overall.” (To see how far you can go with this, check out our article, “The Zero Waste Tour of Sebastopol,” from 2023.)
Loren Bennitt was one of the few members of the public at Tuesday’s meeting. She is the Green Team leader for Community Market’s Sebastopol store.
“I actually had a lot of questions,” she said. “They answered all my questions, and they were very well prepared. It remains to be seen how much this change is going to cost us as a business.”
Bennitt said that Community Market is meeting with SCRR this coming Monday.
“We’ll have a better idea on Monday, but it looks to be, from today’s perspective, an additional $2,500 a month. But we don’t have a definitive answer on that yet, because we are looking to see what we can do to mitigate the cost increase,” she said. “They’ve offered some options, like the public depository for flattened cardboard that they said commercial businesses can use. We also use our cardboard boxes for packing people’s groceries so that’s helped reduce a lot of that.”
Maurer remains convinced that the switch to SCRR was the right one for the city.
“I really think they’re doing a great job,” she said. “I really appreciate what they’re doing in terms of outreach. So hopefully we can iron out some of these more difficult places, and the transition will go smoothly.”
The Sebastopol Times is working on an article about how local businesses are dealing with the transition from Recology to SCRR. If you would like to talk to us about your experience, please reach out to us at sebastopoltimes@gmail.com.
Today being May 1, I'd like to give a shout out to Recology Sonoma-Marin. I'm happy and proud that we here in Forestville have our trash hauled by an employee-owned company.
Thank you for the coverage of the SCRR meeting. I can say one cause for the small turn-out at the meeting is that notwithstanding the supposed "outreach", we had no idea that this meeting was scheduled. Rod McAulay