Waste management executive says dumping yellow bags will cost county more

The head of the waste management company that supplies the plastic yellow trash bags to retailers for Darlington County’s solid waste program said doing away with the yellow bag program could cost Darlington County taxpayers as much as $5 million over the next 10 years in increased waste disposal costs.

Mark A. Dancy, president and CEO of WasteZero, headquartered in Murrells Inlet, said if the county eliminates the program, his company estimates the solid waste tons handled and paid for by the county will increase by around 8,000 tons to 12,000 tons annually as the result of more recyclable items going into the solid waste – or household garbage – stream rather than into recycling. That could mean another $250,000 to $480,000 a year estimated for disposing of that additional waste, Dancy said.

And that does not include the loss of the $291,000 in annual revenue the county currently derives from the yellow bag program.

Darlington County Council is considering doing away with the yellow bag system, although an effort to get an ordinance to do so before council stalled when it encountered procedural problems Monday.

Dancy said those cost estimates are based on his company’s experience with more than 300 municipalities and communities nationwide that use the WasteZero system - a Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT) system – and on eight years worth of waste and recycling statistical data from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data and information provided by Darlington County officials.

“There’s pretty good science to show that when the incentive is taken away, people get wasteful,” Dancy said.

That increase coupled with the annual revenue loss would mean an overall cost to the county of from $540,000 to $770,000 a year more, he said.

The county’s so-called yellow bag program requires consumers to purchase specially designated plastic yellow garbage collection bags for disposal of household waste in the county’s solid waste system. The program, implemented in the 1990s, is intended to promote recycling to reduce the volume of trash going into landfills. The idea behind it was that the more a household recycles, the fewer yellow bags it will have to purchase.

In addition to supplying the bags for the county’s system, WasteZero also provides customer service and invoicing services to the county, according to Darlington County Administrator Dale Surrett. The company does not manufacture the bags.

“This is the first time any community we’ve worked with has gotten out of the program,” Dancy said.

“As an expert in this field - and I say that because this is all I do - I feel it would be a mistake for council and the public to finalize opinions on this matter without this information,” Dancy wrote in a June 1 letter to Surrett. “At a time when counties can least afford to waste money, throwing away $250,000 - $480,000 per year in additional landfill costs is something that must be understood and considered.”

“I just want to make them aware of the unknowns and of what this change could mean,” Dancy told The Messenger.

Dancy acknowledged that his company has an interest in keeping the county as a customer. According to a report presented to Darlington County Council by County Administrator Surrett in May, the program generated $580,411 in revenue for WasteZero in 2010 from sales to retailers.

But Dancy said that with more than 300 municipalities and communities as customers nationwide and gaining new customers annually, the loss of one customer will not significantly affect the company. WasteZero will add 10 new customers as of July 1, Dancy said.

The company supports waste reduction and recycling programs in more than 40 states and Canada, according to its website. Darlington County is the company’s only South Carolina customer. “It’s unique that Darlington County has the program in South Carolina, but it certainly isn’t a new concept,” Dancy said.

Most of those new customers are cities and towns in the northeast and Midwest where Dancy said the Pay-As-You-Throw system is a growing trend in municipal solid waste and recycling management. “The trend is growing where the tipping fees are more expensive,” he said. But he said the concept is economically sound even where tipping fees are lower because it helps keep waste costs down.

Tipping fees in this case are the fees paid by local communities to dispose of waste in landfills. Darlington County currently pays a tipping fee of $25.16 a ton to dispose of solid waste in the Lee County Landfill, said Surrett. But Surrett said the financial cost of disposing of solid waste goes well beyond tipping fees.

Other cost factors that must be considered include the cost of the compacting process to get the trash ready for transport, which includes employee hours and equipment, and the cost of transporting the garbage by 18-wheeler to Lee County, including rising fuel costs and employee costs for drivers and other workers, he said.

Surrett said the county has not tried to track those costs on a per ton basis in the past, but has plans to do so. Dancy said based on his discussions with Surrett and other county officials, he estimates the total tonnage cost to the county at between $30 and $40 a ton.

According to the EPA, currently more than 7,000 communities across the U.S. use the Pay-As-You-Throw system for solid waste disposal. The EPA says that on average, communities with Pay-As-You-Throw see waste reductions of 14 to 27 percent.

The EPA encourages Pay-As-You-Throw as a key avenue for communities to not only manage but reduce solid waste. “EPA endorses this approach to solid waste management, as it has proven to be the single most effective way to reduce residential solid waste, increase recycling and decrease waste-related greenhouse gas emissions,” the agency says in a statement on its website.

A 2008 analysis showed that the WasteZero System decreased residential municipal solid waste for its customers by an average of 43 percent in weight, according to the company’s website.

Dancy said the fact that Darlington County is the only county in South Carolina that uses the system does not mean that the county is out of step or behind the rest of the state or nation. “I’d hate to see the county take a step backward,” he said. “Really, Darlington County is ahead of the curve, not behind it.”

With the Pay-As-You-Throw System consumers pay for the yellow bags based on the volume of household garbage they produce rather than the traditional method of property taxes or fixed fees regardless of how much or how little waste they produce. Pay-As-You-Throw treats trash disposal like other utilities such as electricity, gas or water.

“It’s based on use,” Dancy said. He compared switching to a fee system to doing the same with a household’s utility bill. “Nobody is out here saying let’s socialize light bills or water bills,” he said. “It’s the same idea with the yellow bags. When you take away people’s responsibility they get wasteful. We know it’s going to go in the other direction.”

Dancy said he sees several areas where the county could improve the efficiency of its yellow bag system. “It doesn’t have to be an either or thing,” he said. Changes he said he would recommend to the county include adding a “premium” bag option for residents, eliminating the 90-gallon bag and monitoring the increase in tonnage and costs he said Hartsville will experience since the city opted out of the county’s yellow bag system as of June 1. “Waste has a cost,” he said.

Formerly known as Phoenix Recycling Inc., WasteZero started as a company in Hartsville in 1991, Dancy said. He said the company’s focus is on implementing successful municipal waste reduction and recycling programs to encourage not only recycling but other waste reduction behaviors such as composting and source reduction.