Granville Village Council has selected a new waste hauler to provide trash and recycling services for village residents after the contract with WIN Waste – the current trash hauler – expires on Oct. 31. 

The village council members voted Wednesday, Oct. 2, to approve a contract with Rumpke Waste & Recycling because they said Rumpke’s bid was lower than other proposals, and they like the services the company provides. Under Rumpke, the monthly residential rate will be $22.90, and residents 65 years and older will receive a 10% discount, lowering it to $20.61.

The current rate with WIN Waste is $20.75 a month.

Three of the five contractors – Local Waste, Shackleford and Rumpke – proposed an additional fee on top of the monthly residential rates (the base rates in the table do not include these fees). Rumpke has an additional $2.95 processing fee if customers use their credit card to process the payment. 

Every contractor, including Rumpke, offers a payment method to avoid processing fees and Village Manager Herb Koehler said the council will ensure Granville residents are aware of such methods – such as linking one’s bank account to the portal instead of using the credit card option. 

The village considered five bids for a new trash hauling contract, and selected Rumpke due to its lower costs and service options. Courtesy of Granville Village Council

Even with the extra charges, Local Waste submitted the lowest bid to the village, but council members said they determined that it was not the lowest and “best” hauler when they turned it down during the council meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 18. Rumpke submitted the next-lowest bid. 

Rumpke Waste & Recycling is a regionally based waste and recycling corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, with approximately 600 employees in Columbus. 

Koehler said part of the reason Rumpke appealed to Granville is the company’s emphasis on sustainability initiatives, which are in line with the village’s own environmental goals. 

“Jake (Heffron) from Rumpke has come, has met with me several times even before this, about what innovations they are doing with Rumpke for recycling,” said Council Member Laura Mickelson during the council meeting. “And it’s amazing the things that they are doing. … As a member of the sustainability committee, that’s the direction I would like to see the village go.”

Heffron, the municipal and public sector representative from Rumpke said the company will now service the village one day a week and is expanding its list of acceptable recycling items to include things such as plastic clamshells – which the company just announced can be recycled to keep more material out of landfills. 

Heffron said Rumpke owns and operates 15 landfills across Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, and Illinois, and is converting the waste into natural gas, which is reintroduced to the electric grid. The three other haulers who submitted bids to the village – Local Waste, Win Waste, and Shackleford – transport the recycling they gather to Rumpke’s facility in Pike County for processing. 

“We look forward to working with the village,” Heffron said. “We just opened our new facility here in Columbus. We’d love for people to come take a tour of it.”

Koehler said Rumpke Waste & Recycling will begin serving the village on Nov. 1. 

Mayor Melissa Hartfield said the trash-hauling bid is renewed every three years, and six years ago the village awarded the bid to a company called Waste Away, which served the village for four years. The company was not the lowest bidder but had a reputation for great service, responsiveness, and good truck maintenance. The company was later sold to WIN Waste Innovations.

Hartfield said a key reason most municipalities attempt to get a contract with a single trash hauler “is to reduce the number of trucks coming through town all week, and reducing wear and tear on the roads and infrastructure.”

Earlier this year, Koehler said, WIN Waste made a billing system change that caused disruptions to waste hauling services in the village. 

“Their services stopped for a period that probably took about three months to fix. And it wasn’t every single resident, but it was just enough residents … to create discomfort with the community and their service provider,” Koehler said. “In my opinion, from a village staff perspective, we saw more complaints under WIN Waste than we did under Waste Away.”

Sarah Mathews, the representative from WIN Waste, apologized about the billing issues during the council meeting on Wednesday.  

“It wasn’t a billing situation. It was a picking-up-the-trash situation. To get our attention, you guys stopped picking up the trash,” Council Member Kim Keethler Ball said. “Certainly not just for one week – like two weeks, three weeks – till we figured it out by bringing it to the village council and talking to each other.”

Donna Chang writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.