On the heels of a successful Climate Week bringing awareness of climate science to Montana, an updated and improved public recycling plan was presented to and passed by Billings City Council.
The goal of the program is to provide a similar curbside experience as we do now but through more sustainable methods. Each property would decide if they wanted a 96 gallon container or a smaller 64 gallon container – whichever matched their disposal needs most closely. With this base service fee, they would also receive a yard waste (green) container that would be collected weekly and the ability to dispose of their cardboard at curbside one time per month.
Customers would have an option to add an additional black container and/or green container for a small fee. The fee for the additional containers is relatively low to encourage the use of them. Customers could also contact the City for a scheduled pick up of any additional material that would be collected curbside for a fee.
After analyzing the waste characteristics of the residential properties, if the City collected cardboard curbside for free, almost all customers would be able to use one black container for garbage collection by diverting their cardboard and freeing up space in the container. If a customer could not consistently do that, we would encourage them to utilize a second black container for the minimal fee which is consistent with the existing City Code.