Over the past few years, The City of Atlanta’s recycling program has experienced the very same challenges that municipalities all over the country faced – COVID-19, labor shortages, operational efficiency challenges, contamination, etc. However, when many of these challenges came to the forefront in 2020 due to COVID-19, the City was already underway in a multi-year, $4 million grant from The Recycling Partnership, with support from The Coca-Cola Foundation, along with many other stakeholders, to improve access to recycling and increase the capture of more quality recyclable items from single-family homes.

Much of the work for this project in 2019-2020 was The Partnership’s Feet on the Street program. And when COVID-19 put a pause on direct in-person engagement and work, the team realigned on what could be done to continue to improve the program. A slight turn from the original plan resulted in a much more resilient and sustainable program. Concurrently with the other initiatives in place and a focus on operational efficiency and the future, The Partnership engaged SCS Engineers to assess scenarios such as a dedicated fleet and staff, service level reconfigurations, and outsourcing. By analyzing various scenarios, the City was able to make an educated decision to maintain the same level of service through the use of a dedicated fleet and staff. The additional analysis resulted in route specifications (e.g., maximum weight capacity for each vehicle, wait times at the City’s transfer and disposal locations, weights collected per route) and key performance indicators (e.g., max dumps, packout ratio, in-service time, workday utilization, route balance, collection day balance, units per route, units per dump, pounds per stop, setout rate, tons per route, productivity rate, miles per day, growth rate).  Using this data, it was revealed 88% of all recycling routes could be automated, which reduces the time for actual cart collection by about one-third compared to the semi-automated collection with one helper, instead of two.  The study also indicated that the City would transition from 100 routes a week as is currently performed to approximately 72 routes. The study results indicated that after the assignment of existing automated side loaders (ASLs) (Phase I) and the purchase of new ASLs (full implementation), the annual savings will be approximately $2 million.

At the end of this project, contamination at single-family residences had decreased by more than 30% and the recycling stream had yielded 14,000 new tons of recyclables. Single-family residences can recycle glass curbside again. The City negotiated a new recycling processing contract with equitable commodity revenue share.  With this new rebate structure, in 2022 the City will receive an estimated $1.1 million in rebate offsets from recycling which will feed back into supporting ongoing recycling allowing the City to make investments in equipment and solid waste routing software.