Partly cloudy with late night showers or thunderstorms. Low around 70F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Partly cloudy with late night showers or thunderstorms. Low around 70F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.

Dustin Schoonover, of Allied Waste, collects trash in Roxbury Park in Goshen in 2018. The city is about to take on a new trash removal contract.

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Dustin Schoonover, of Allied Waste, collects trash in Roxbury Park in Goshen in 2018. The city is about to take on a new trash removal contract.

On August 1 the City will begin a new contract for trash removal.

This is big news, even if its not especially glitzy. Trash is personal, which is the reason its big news — any news that affects you personally is big — but its also a little unseemly and revealing which is why its maybe not so glitzy. At any rate, this is a really important change that we’re making in Goshen, and its important to understand why.

This change is happening for two reasons. The first reason is because the City’s solid waste budget (for removing trash) has doubled over the past seven years, from $800,000 to $1.6 million.

That trajectory is unsustainable for any municipality, and its been driven in part by the fact that we have been producing more and more trash per household over that same period. So, needing to be better stewards of public funds is one reason for the new trash contract.

The second reason is that we need to act with greater respect for our home. Trash is a symptom of an underlying and often unrecognized disrespect for the land we live in and the abundance it provides us. Its hard for us to see our trash for what it is — partly because we’re so surrounded by it and used to it, and partly because we whisk as much of it away as quickly as possible — but it is actually the direct result of not properly valuing other people, other people’s work, and the vast bounty of our land and our planet.

That’s a lot to absorb, I know. But…consider the amount of waste which you generated this past week, and that it is all being absorbed by our home.

So, our new trash program is built around two main changes. The first is that we are adding curbside recycling for residential properties. Residential properties are roughly defined as any building providing 4 or fewer residential units.

A stand-alone home is eligible; manufactured homes (including in “parks”) are eligible; condominiums are eligible. Recycling will be picked up every other week, on the same day that trash is picked up.

The second change has to do with trash. While trash will continue to be picked up weekly, it will be limited to one 96-gallon container. Hopefully, diverting recyclables from the trash stream will allow one 96-gallon container to suffice for weekly trash generation and removal for most of us.

In the event that more trash is created than can fit in that container, a trash tag should be purchased for $2 and attached to any additional bags of trash. Without a trash tag, additional trash will not be removed.

Another important aspect of this change is that trash and recycling will be picked up along the street going forward. Alley pick-up will generally be discontinued because the mechanized disposal vehicles have trouble fitting through narrow alleyways. This will feel unusual for many of us in Goshen, but it is not uncommon in an increasing number of cities and towns.

Borden Waste-Away will be delivering a 96-gallon recycling container to eligible residences in the next weeks, along with trash containers. Recyclables include paper, wax-coated paper (like juice cartons or frozen food packages), cardboard, magazines, newspapers and inserts, hardback and paperback books, aluminum, steel and tin cans, and plastics numbers 1-7. These can all be placed in the recycling container, loose, not separated or bagged – which makes it much easier for these materials to be sorted at the recycling facility.

This past week, I and others who work for the City, have spent time in various neighborhoods around Goshen, talking with residents to make sure they know about these changes in our trash removal program. Some were aware, some weren’t.

In my experience, talking with nearly sixty different residents, there were concerns and questions about this change, but all of them — except for one — recognized the need for this change, or were interested in it, or were excited by it. The one who wasn’t seemed to feel that he shouldn’t have to pay for additional trash.

I get that change is hard. I think we’ve taken unlimited trash removal for granted, as a right, and for some this new program will feel like a shock. But trash is a choice. And its also a real expense, in ways that are easy to calculate and in ways which are hard to calculate.

We can choose to create less trash, less waste; we can choose to not buy in to a throw-away economy. Our trash is the material manifestation of lost money and lost time earning that money. Given a nudge, I think most of us will choose less trash.

For more information about the new trash removal program in Goshen, please call the City Switchboard at 574-533-8621 or visit https://goshenindiana.org/trash-collection.

Aaron Sawatsky-Kingsley is Goshen’s urban forester and director of the Department of Environmental Resilience. He can be reached at aaronkingsley@goshencity.com or at 574-537-3850.

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