Republic file photo Columbus City Hall.
The city of Columbus is searching for a new company to transfer and process all the recyclable material from the city’s curbside pickup program.
City officials said they have received a proposal from one company — Rumpke.
The Columbus Board of Public Works this past week voted to take under advisement Rumpke’s proposal to haul the recyclable material collected throughout the city to a processing center where it will be cleaned and sorted, said Bryan Burton, the city’s director of public works.
For years, the city has worked with Ray’s Trash Service, with the most recent contract set to expire on Feb. 1. Under the terms of the agreement, the city delivers the recyclable material to a transfer station at Nugent Sand Co. on Indianapolis Road. From there, Ray’s takes the material to its Indianapolis sorting facility, where the items were sorted, cleaned and packaged into bales of similar material and sold on the open market.
In 2022, Ray’s Trash Service was acquired by Houston-based Waste Management Inc., which has notified the city that “they were no longer going to be accepting our material at that location” at the end of contract, Burton said.
“Right now, we’re just looking for a new hauler,” Burton said this past week. “We got the one proposal today, and they are proposing that they stay at the same location. So, they would just take over the Nugent Sand site, and we as the city would just continue doing the same thing.”
Should the city decide to enter into a contract with Rumpke, the city’s recyclable material would be taken to the company’s processing facility in Cincinnati, Burton said.
Under the terms of the agreement that the city has had with Ray’s Trash Service, now Waste Management, the city would get paid a portion of the profits when the market for recyclable materials was up but would not have pay the company when the market was down. Burton said he would anticipate a similar arrangement should the city decide to go with Rumpke.
Burton said local residents will not notice any difference in the city’s curbside pickup program, as recyclable material will still be collected from residents like normal. The only change would be where the materials are being sent to be processed after they are collected and which company would take them there.
“On the collection side, (residents) will see no change,” Burton said. “It’s just on the disposal side of it.”
Burton said he anticipates that the Columbus Board of Public Works will consider Rumpke’s proposal during the board’s meeting on Tuesday.
