The average Lexington household currently generates 1,391 pounds of waste per year. Of the total waste produced, approximately 50% is curbside trash, 20% is curbside recycling, 15% is special recycling, and 15% is biodegradable waste such as compost and yard waste. Compost tonnage in Lexington is on the rise, growing exponentially since Black Earth Compost was launched.
Lexington currently sends its trash to Wheelabrator North Andover, a facility that compresses garbage and converts it to electricity. The facility burns garbage, and the gases produced from the combustion reaction pass through water-filled boiler tubes, creating high pressure steam. The steam is then used to drive turbine generators, creating electricity.
All waste processing facilities levy a tipping fee on municipalities — the price per ton of trash taken from the town. Lexington’s tipping fee is about $100 and rising.
Last Thursday, several dozen enthusiastic Lexington residents attended a Zoom presentation on waste management. Two presenters from the town’s Waste Reduction Task Force, Sustainability and Resilience Officer Maggie Peard and Department of Public Works Director David Pinsonneault, stressed the importance of reducing landfill-bound waste production—to protect both the environment and the municipal budget. The Task Force aims to update the town’s waste collection system by July 2027, and is currently seeking to educate town residents and hear their feedback.
To reduce costs, Lexington should expand waste diversion, or redirect incinerator-bound waste to other locations such as the recycling bin or compost, the Waste Reduction Task Force suggests.
To do this, Lexington will do more than just encourage composting. Black Earth Compost will convert one acre of Lexington land on Hartwell Avenue to process composted waste, and will offer a discount on curbside collection programs in Lexington. A residential food waste ban has also been proposed.
“Lexington has always tried to be ahead of the curve,” said Pinsonneault.
Currently in Lexington, trash is picked up manually by trash haulers. This is an extremely onerous and even dangerous task. In fact, being a trash hauler was the fourth deadliest job in the US in 2023. So, manual collection is being phased out by residential trash collectors, and is being replaced by automated arms. This could make the trash collecting process much more efficient: trucks would idle less, and would increase the number of households they can serve per hour by 300%. In order for these arms to grab trash bins, empty their contents into the back of a garbage truck, and move on to the next house, all bins must be of uniform size.
For this reason, Lexington is seeking to standardize bin size as other towns have done. Bin volume ranges from 35 to 96 gallons, with myriad options in between. One Zoom presentation attendee said the chosen volume “needs to be easy to move a distance in bad weather,” while another said they had a “concern that if the bin is smaller, I will often have overflow costs.”
The vast majority of Zoom presentation attendees said that a 35-gallon trash bin “meets their weekly needs most weeks of the year.” Old trash bins could be used as yard waste containers instead of bags, suggested Peard.
Standardizing bin size could help mitigate the excess waste issue, as extra waste would have to be put in overflow bags. Households that routinely produce excess waste might have to pay an annual fee for a second bin. The extra cost could discourage residents from generating overflow waste.
The “pay for what you use” model is a common solution to excess waste issues. Roughly 46% of Massachusetts municipalities use some type of volume-based fee structure. Lexington experimented with a “pay as you throw” system in 2001, but the effort was short-lived, ended by backlash that included a lawsuit, citizen petitions, and finally a ballot referendum reversing a Special Town Meeting vote to permit waste-collection fees.
Lexington offers special collections services for bulky items like mattresses, furniture, scrap metals, and other miscellaneous items that cannot fit in a trash bin. Currently, these services are free to individual households and paid for with taxpayer money. The town approved a bulky item fee structure which will go into effect this July, in which only those who use services will pay for them. “That’s a more equitable solution for those small households who have been paying proportionately more in the past,” said Peard. The town is currently developing a mobile app where users can schedule pick-ups for their bulky items.
And finally, the town plans to create new accessible diversion opportunities, such as more cardboard drop-off locations, and, potentially, “swap shops” where residents can trade unwanted items.
At this spring’s Town Meeting, the town will consider appropriating money to purchase uniformly-sized trash containers and establishing an overflow fee. The Waste Reduction Task Force emphasized that they are seeking as much resident input as possible in order to select a universally acceptable bin size. To share your input, contact the Waste Reduction Task Force here.
“These [ideas] all need to work together to get a program that’s going to work for everybody in the community. It’s to reduce waste and it’s to protect against the rising costs. We want to create a more modern, safe and efficient waste collection and disposal system,” Pinsonneault said.
The presentation can be viewed here, and further information about Lexington’s Zero Waste initiative is available here.
“Bags could be purchased and used for waste that does not fit inside the standard bin, which would then have to be dropped off at a specific location. The inconvenience would discourage residents from generating overflow waste.”
This sounds an awful lot like intentionally degrading the quality of a municipal service so people will use it less. Call me crazy, but shouldn’t municipal services first and foremost aspire to deliver a quality service that people find useful?
Hi Tony, I agree, municipal services should aspire to deliver a quality service that people find useful. 100%! As a citizen volunteer (Waste Reduction Taskforce) and not an employee of the DPW, and can honestly tell you that I have been very impressed working with these folks over the past few years. They are committed to exactly that, and are reasonable and professional.
This is a national challenge facing every municipality in the country, one that we have to solve here in Lexington as well. The town has is also receiving support and information from the State, sharing with us how other local towns and cities are working to address the same challenges we are confronting.
The goal is figuring out the best service citizens need while reducing waste in a way that the town can afford. I highly encourage you to attend an upcoming presentation and Q&A so you can feel fully connected to this open and very transparent process. Please feel free to email me directly if you would like to chat. There is a link above to contact the team and I would be more than happy to hear your feedback or concerns. Thanks!
Thanks!
Trash is trash. People don’t just find ways to create it. Every household has a common need to dispose of it. The most efficient and cost effective way is the way we do it now.
Let’s not fool ourselves in thinking it will cost less if we create a convoluted administration fee that will only add to costs and confuse and frustrate everyone. Lexington is smarter than that. We rejected such a scheme 25 years ago by a 2-1 vote. Do we want to allow 3 votes of Select Board members to control fees for trash removal. It would be way too tempting to just nickel and dime the taxpayers to balance ever expanding operating budgets.
Trash collection via side arm loaders is the least effective way to have a successful trash service for all the varied needs folks have. The bins are cumbersome for elderly and dangerous to maneuver on hilly property and in bad weather. They’re also unsightly when left in front yard or driveways when people have no other convenient place to store them.
I’ve been an observor of Lexington’s trash systems for over 40 years. The way Capital, our current hauler, does it is the best service at the least cost.
Let’s not burden our citizens with complicating a service we all need on a weekly basis. Sure, offer diversion options. Lexingtonians always step up to do the right thing. We’re one of the best recycling communities in the State. Yes we can do better but not by charging us more for less service. Please, stop this madness.
Thank you Peter!
Right on Peter!
You are right on Peter. We two seniors put out a 13 gallon bag of trash each week and every other week the compost bin and blue recycle bin. All my plastic goes to a bin collected by Trex in a local store (hopefully they are repurposing it into Trex products). We have no place to put the unwieldy large bins illustrated nor could we maneuver them. And they are too large for us. What option is offered for us with side are loaders?
You are right on Peter. We two seniors put out a 13 gallon bag of trash each week and every other week the compost bin and blue recycle bin. All my plastic wrap & bags go to a bin collected by Trex in a local store (hopefully they are repurposing it into Trex products). We have no place to put the unwieldy large bins illustrated nor could we maneuver them. What option is offered for us?
Mr. Kelley, I certainly hope you will engage this team in an open and constructive dialogue. If you have attended any of the numerous meetings and forums we have held, and I believe you have, you have learned why automated arm loaders are quickly becoming the only realistic solution that haulers will be offering towns, and for lots of great reasons – cost and time saving, as well as safety of the people picking up our trash.
I have been so impressed with this team and staff. I know there is some history here in town (pun intended lol) but please know this is not the same process that happened all those years ago.
Please engage with us in constructive dialogue because your thoughts and concerns are valid and desired. This is a national challenge for every municipality in the country. And there are proven ways to actually reduce trash – so we are seeking a comprehensive approach while working on ways to support and accommodate folks who need help.
I hope you will attend another session soon as there is a lot more information and work that has been done since that first forum we had over a year ago (I think you attended at the Community Center if I recall correctly). I look forward to working with you in a constructive way. Thanks!
How much will my taxes get reduced when you limit how much trash I can put out?????????
Hi Mike, for the vast majority of residents, you won’t have to think about or adjust the trash you put out with the biggest change for most being a nice standard bin. Unless you produce a ‘way above average’ amount of trash, nothing changes. Of course as citizens, we collectively should try to think about reducing the waste we produce and how we can and should reduce our overall household waste.
I can honestly say the efforts we are making as a community are already reducing the cost to the town which ultimately saves us tax payers. So the challenge is that the cost of trash disposal is going up all over the state and country, (landfills in MA will basically be at capacity by 2030!) so how do we address these rising costs but still provide the services we all expect.
Please do come to our next presentation and bring your questions and concerns! Or send them in to the link above. As a committee (volunteers like me and staff) we want to hear from our fellow residents and have an open dialogue. This has been an extremely open and transparent process and the program hasn’t been fully determined yet which is why we keep having all these presentations, in person and on Zoom so folks can be heard. I hope you will join the discussion. Thanks!
Thank you for your comment @Mike Merrick, I was wondering the exact same thing. Taxes seem to go up at least 3% per year. Do the services at my home provided by the town improve by at least the same rate? With regard to trash, the Black Earth composting has greatly reduced the amount of waste going into our trash, so isn’t the town already saving money?
Our current hauler is doing an excellent job. Leave well enough alone.
My understanding from listening to the presentation is that we won’t have a choice about moving to the bins and the trucks with the arms that pick up the bins. The only two companies which currently provide manual dumping of our trash cans are discontinuing it so our next contract (will start in 2027 or 2028) will have to be different from what we have now.