Garbage and recycling collection in the City of Washington will be changing. The council has approved the issuance of a solid waste and recycling collection request for proposals. Those bids are due back to the city by February 14th. Mayor Jaron Rosien highlighted two aspects of the process, “By leaving the RFPs more open and less specific, after the fact we can then drill down and get more specific, which is really nice. Unlike other situations where we just have to take the quote and the low bid and this gives us a little more wiggle room, so to speak. And finally, the fact that your RFP, we have a game plan for fixed-income households. If someone is throwing away very, very little trash that could be the 35-gallon [container] every other week, and it’s like within 82-cents, potentially within 82-cents [of the current rate].”

The options would be for a 65 gallon or a 35 gallon container. The bids will be reviewed and then brought to the council for consideration. Specifics will not be known until that time, but days of collection may change. The change is to streamline recycling to a single container for pick up.