An earlier start time for recycling and trash collection in five Centre County townships will continue during the summer months after trying it out on a trial basis last year.
Waste Management and the Centre County Recycling and Refuse Authority will begin pickups at 6 a.m. instead of 7 a.m. from the Tuesday after Memorial Day through the Friday before Labor Day in Benner, College, Ferguson, Harris and Patton townships, following unanimous approval by the Centre Region Council of Governments General Forum on Monday night to amend the refuse and recycling contract.
The earlier start time will be in place for at least the summers of 2023 and 2024. The townships’ current refuse and recycling contract runs through the spring of 2025.
State College and Halfmoon Township, which are not part of the contract, abstained from the vote.
After an especially hot summer of 2021, Waste Management approached the COG’s Climate Action and Sustainability Committee last year about trying an earlier pickup time and a pilot program was implemented for 2022.
Patton Township Supervisor Betsy Whitman said the schedule change is about providing better working conditions for refuse and recycling haulers.
“The number of days when the temperature is over 90 have increased and will continue to increase,” Whitman said.
Waste Management and CCRRA have protocols for worker safety in the heat, but operators still experience heat exhaustion on very hot days, according to the 2022 proposal. The change allows work to be shifted to cooler times, since the highest temperatures tend to occur between 3 and 5 p.m.
Residential refuse and recycling weights also are higher in the summer, meaning operators are working harder during the hottest months of the year.
The defined boundaries of Memorial Day and Labor Day for the schedule change made it easier to avoid any confusion about when trash and recycling collection would begin or ad hoc decisions on changes.
“Weather fluctuates,” Whitman said. “You can’t make a decision the night before and expect people to have gotten that decision and get their waste out that evening or in the morning by 6.”
The contract’s service area includes about 16,000 residents and during the 2022 pilot, COG and the townships received only 48 comments about the change — split about evenly between positive and negative. More than half of the comments came before the start of the 14-week trial period.
Negative comments included complaints about having to get up earlier to put trash and recycling at the curb and concerns about animals, wind and vandalism if putting them out overnight. Positive comments indicated support for workers and individuals who said they always put their trash and recycling out the night before anyway.
COG also found there were very few missed collection, “indicating that most customers had their trash and recycling at the curb prior to pickup,” according to the report on the pilot program.
“It was by many standards a success in terms of people’s acceptance of it,” Whitman said.
