Over the next three years, the city expects that each year it will need to purchase 1,500 recycling carts, 400 compost carts and 600 trash carts. The contract was authorized by the city council at its Dec. 3, 2012 meeting.

The contract through which the city is purchasing the carts is through the Metro Waste Authority, at a cost for the base carts that is slightly higher than through an alternate agreement that’s available through the National Intergovernmental Purchasing Alliance. When the cost of an RFID tag, labels, assembly and shipping are added in, the difference in the cost per cart in the two agreements is smaller: $55.01 (96 gallon), $49.86 (64 gallon) and $39.97 (32 gallon) in the Metro Waste Authority contract compared with $56.63 (96 gallon), $48.47 (64 gallon) and $39.77 (32 gallon) in the National Intergovernmental Purchasing Alliance.

The cost of adding an RFID tag is $0.75 per cart. The city would like to use the RFID tags to monitor set-out rates for recycling carts, in order to target education efforts and to manage the collection routes.

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 301 E. Huron. A more detailed report will follow: [link]