Conservation-minded Vancouver residents now have not one but two new services that collect hard-to-recycle items.
Waste Connections recently launched RecyclePlus. For $10 a month, RecyclePlus collects batteries, light bulbs, textiles, plastic bags, Styrofoam/block foam and clamshells every other week for customers within Vancouver city limits.
RecyclePlus is Waste Connections’ answer to Ridwell, a Seattle-based company that began pickups here in June.
“We’re going to do our best to be competitive,” said Derek Ranta, district manager for Waste Connections of Washington, which provides garbage and recycling services throughout Clark County. “We want to own the waste stream at all levels.”
Sign Up
If you live in a single-family home within Vancouver city limits and want to sign up for RecyclePlus, visit wcnorthwest.com/recycleplus.
Local governments — Clark County and its cities — contract with Waste Connections for weekly residential pickup. RecyclePlus is a service that Waste Connections is selling directly to households.
While Waste Connections customers currently have the option of placing batteries in sealed, clear plastic bags on top of recycling carts as part of their municipal service, the other categories collected by RecyclePlus can’t go in the usual blue bins.
“These items have to be handled independently and can’t run across our big sort line,” Ranta said.
Those who sign up for RecyclePlus will receive a durable, lidded box and reusable cloth bags in which to place the items — much like Ridwell customers do.
The categories of items collected are a bit different, however. Ridwell collects batteries, light bulbs, plastic bags and textiles, and a rotating fifth category (for example, corks or bike accessories) for upcycling or donation to local nonprofits. Ridwell charges $12 to $16 a month for pickups every two weeks (with the lowest price for those who pay ahead for a whole year) and an extra $1 for a bag of clamshells or $9 for a bag of Styrofoam. Ridwell serves not only Vancouver, but also Hazel Dell and Salmon Creek.
Waste Connections’ flat rate of $10 a month includes clamshells and Styrofoam, as well as batteries, light bulbs, textiles and plastic bags. RecyclePlus is starting within Vancouver city limits but may expand to the densely populated surrounding areas and small cities depending on demand, Ranta said.
“Our regular trucks do a thousand stops in a day. RecyclePlus does 50 stops a day. It’s a much different business model,” he said
As of last month, Waste Connections had signed up about 100 RecyclePlus customers; it hopes to reach 1,000 by the end of the year. (Ridwell didn’t launch here until it had at least 1,000 interested households.)
Even though the service is starting small, Ranta hopes RecyclePlus will help Waste Connections with one of recycling’s biggest challenges: contamination. It usually happens because of so-called wishcycling — when people throw things they wish could be recycled into their blue carts. Plastic bags especially are a problem because they tangle the sorting machinery and shut down the lines.
“We think this helps on the wishful recycling side, but we have to be careful to keep items separate,” Ranta said.
