Gwinnett commission may hire its own trash collector

As a judge prepares to rule on a residential waste disposal ordinance requiring Gwinnett residents to recycle, the County Commission on Tuesday will consider hiring its own garbage collector.

The county’s contract includes recycling service, but no county policy requires employees and departments to recycle.

“There isn’t anything that is mandatory in terms of them recycling, similar to what we have on the residential side,” said Scott Callan, director of purchasing for Gwinnett County. “We do recycle, but there isn’t anything contractually that requires that to happen.”

There are other differences between the proposed contract and the residential waste disposal plan the county is implementing Jan. 2.

The county’s contract with Waste Management will run for five years, but is renewable at the end of each year. The residential plan, implemented through Gwinnett Clean and Beautiful Services, runs for six years with one of two haulers, Waste Pro and Advanced Disposal Services. It does not carry a provision for annual renewal without cause.

The county’s contract is for $119,000 each of the first three years and allows for a 2 percent increase in each of the final two years.

The residential program will bill each residential property $20.45 per month until July. After that, properties will be billed $17.86 per month, a rate locked in until the end of 2010.

“We do have a program here … and we do recycle,” said Gwinnett County Communications Director Joe Sorenson. “But we don’t have anything mandatory. There is no policy. It was something we set up several years ago in anticipation of what was coming county-wide.”

A Superior Court judge is considering a challenge to the county’s residential garbage collection program brought by two garbage collection companies that claim they were wrongly excluded. Lawyers for the county and Clean and Beautiful say the county has done nothing wrong.