Kids & Family
Garbage-Collection Changes Look to Cut Waste
The town looks to reduce waste by 85 percent by 2030.
The town board moved Tuesday to cut down on the amount of waste hauled away from homes and businesses in Bedford.
Amending town garbage-collection procedures after a brief, silent public hearing, the board set a goal of reducing waste disposal by about 85 percent in less than two decades.
To achieve that—roughly “equivalent to achieving a ‘zero waste’ goal,” a new local law says—the town will look at so-called “single-stream” recycling and other waste-reduction measures, including volume pricing for collections.
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In single-stream recycling, all the materials designated for reuse would be put into the same container. Under volume-based pricing, known as “pay as you throw,” customers pay less as their single recycling container correspondingly shrinks in size, essentially rewarding locals who dispose of less waste.
As soon as the local law is filed in Albany, town officials will begin to analyze waste collections, developing baseline tonnage figures, tracking progress toward waste-reduction goals and seeing how Bedford compares with other jurisdictions.
