The hydraulic arm lifts the plastic bin up into the air, dumps the aromatic contents and then sends it back down to the ground in seconds with what appears to be smooth motion.

But inside the cab, driver Rod Holmes, along with the rest of his 50,000-pound garbage truck, is wobbled like a kayak in a gale by the power of that arm.

“It takes a lot of getting used to,” admits Holmes, a 15-year Allied Waste collector—don’t call him a garbage man—and five-year veteran on the yard waste route in the Snoqualmie Valley.

“It has to have that kick,” he explains. “It has to have a lot of power to shake out all that stuff out of there, so… when the customer comes home, they’re not giving us a call.”

Holmes’ eight-hour shift—two days a week in North Bend, three days a week in Snoqualmie, collecting thousands of green yard waste bins, dumping them, coming back for more—is full of shakes, wobbles, beeps, hisses and funny smells. But it’s also surprisingly full of human contact.

Like all Allied Waste collectors, Holmes drives solo. But he gets to know many residents—most Valley folk are great, he says—parents, children and pets.

“I even have dog treats for my dogs out here,” he said, pulling out a bag of bacon-flavored Canine Carry-Outs. “I meet about five a day.”

Pointing to a passing golden Lab making his own rounds on Kendall Peak Street on Snoqualmie Ridge, “I already hooked him up,” Holmes said.

As Allied Waste’s sole yard waste collector in the Valley, Homes works under the company’s contracts with North Bend and Snoqualmie. Those contracts are up for renewal this year, and city officials are negotiating new terms beginning in 2012, hoping to expand options and lower the local ecological footprint.

Valley’s trash picture

Solid waste in Snoqualmie, North Bend, Fall City and Preston and the surrounding county is picked up by Allied Waste. In Carnation and parts north, garbage is picked up by Waste Management. Together, Waste Management and Allied Waste are the first and second largest haulers in the United States, commanding roughly a $20 billion share of the industry.

In Snoqualmie and North Bend, trucks hit the streets several days a week for eight-and-a-half-hour shifts.

In some cities, they’re on the road as early as 6 a.m.; in most, it’s 7 a.m., for most, though, for schoolchildren’s safety as well as noise reasons.

Three different kinds of trcks make the rounds. Some are specifically garbage, others recycling, still others solely yard waste, like Holmes.

Recyclers deliver to a high-tech processing center in Seattle, while yard waste trucks deliver to the Cedar Grove Composting facility at Maple Valley.

All garbage from the Valley is trucked to the county’s Cedar Hills landfill, dumped by the hauler for $95 a ton.

The 920,000-acre landfill takes in about 800,000 tons of trash a year, or 2,200 tons a day—all of the garbage generated from across the county, except Seattle and Milton. The landfill is expected to fill up after 2024.

County residents may self-haul, but city residents can’t move in without signing up for garbage service: “Not an option,” said Dan Marcinko, Snoqualmie Public Works director.

Collection is mandatory for homes, apartments and businesses in city limits, “meaning you have to use the contractor we’re using,” Marcinko said.

Recycling is included in the rate, typically about $45 for a single family residence, which can be reduced for low-income residents or seniors.

Snoqualmie’s contract could be sweetened as part of the bid process. Proposals are due Wednesday, Sept. 7. A finalist will be selected by October, council action will come in December, and the new contract comes online next June.

“You always want to do what’s best for residents,” Marcinko said. Seeking a better contract, the city is asking for more efficient trucks, more variety in container sizes and more recycling options.

In return, the hauler collects fees amounting to about $3 million from the city’s 10,600 trash customers.

With contracts coming up only periodically, this is the time for competition among haulers for trash dollars.

“When you go through a competitive process, you have the opportunity to get the market price on things,” said Jeff Brown, a private trash contract consultant to the city of Snoqualmie,

Thanks to the recession, the marketplace has changed. Prices are lower and contractors are hungrier for hauling accounts; there are more haulers in the mix, and a wider, better variety of recycling options and tech.

Recently, the city started receiving a monthly breakdown on the amount and types of waste it produces. Those numbers could help Mayor Matt Larson’s efforts to reduce the city’s carbon footprint, increase recycling and educate young people about the importance of being green.

In an e-mail, Larson told the Valley Record that proven and unproven technologies now being tested may make landfills a thing of the past.

“The solid waste industry is—and will be—going through many transformations,” he said. “Many governments and companies are beginning to realize that conventional “waste” is actually a complex mix of potential and useful commodities such as, fuel, fertilizer, compost, metals, chemicals.”

He wants the city’s next solid waste contract to allow as much flexibility as possible to adapt to new discoveries.

“One of the areas most lacking in our current contract is the ability to separate food waste for our commercial and retail customers,” Larson said. “Local restaurants, schools, (The) Salish, TPC, etc., do not have the option to separate their food waste, which represents a majority of their waste streams. I hope that new technologies… will offer solutions to such problems. We wish to be sure that we can take full advantage if and when the opportunity arrives.

“It is my hope to find processes that are not only more environmentally attractive, but those that are more financially attractive as well,” he added.

Allied’s waste options have evolved in the course of the prior contract. The company most recently expanded a food waste program: residents can now dump egg cartons, rinds and food scraps into their yard waste bins. They didn’t always have that option.

“When I started here, March of 2009, you couldn’t do it,” Marcinko said. “Now you can. They’ve done a great job of adding, of allowing the city to make changes.”

Sole provider?

Two contract companies serve North Bend, each with its own franchise area. Allied Waste Management collects trash, recycling and yard waste from most North Bend residents, while Kent-Meridian Disposal has three separate contracts to serve the recently annexed Maloney Grove, Stilson, and Tanner neighborhoods of the city.

The city’s contract with Allied expires in 2012, but the North Bend City Council last month approved a 10-year extension of Kent-Meridian’s contract. By this extension, the council was able to avoid paying damages to Kent-Meridian for the loss of its franchise, as state law dictates. However, the city still has to manage multiple contracts.

City Administrator Duncan Wilson said Allied has requested that the city delay calling for bids on a new contract. The city agreed, and has begun negotiating with Allied on a possible future contract.

“We wanted to investigate a way to bring all those contracts under one entity,” Wilson explained, and, since the company is part-owner of Kent-Meridian, “Allied might buy out the contract.”

Whatever provider wins the 2012 contract, the city wants a few changes from its current service level. Some possibilities are increased yard waste collection, now every other week, and lower rates for residents and businesses.

The monthly charge for the lowest volume of collection at a business within North Bend is $120, and $198 for a business outside the city limits “… so you can see there’s a serious savings in the city,” Wilson said. “Allied has told us it’s feasible for them to buy out the (Kent-Meridian) contract and effectuate some savings.”

However, if the city and Allied can’t agree on terms, the city still has time to advertise for bids from other service providers.

Old landfill

Carnation used to manage its own waste stream, with a city truck and a couple of employees making the weekly rounds. That system worked for more than 50 years, City Manager Ken Carter estimated, since the city had its own landfill.

“I think it wasn’t a landfill like we think of a landfill today,” said Carter, who’s been with the city for about two years. “It was the old, old city dump.”

The landfill was closed in 1989, and the city has been contracting with Waste Management for trash collection, recycling, and yard waste services. The current franchise agreement expires next year, and although the City Council hasn’t begun discussing its options, Carter has already been thinking about them.

“There is a big hole in our current agreement regarding commercial solid waste recycling,” Carter said. Without specific provisions for commercial recycling, “For a commercial business to recycle, doesn’t save them anything.”

Carter is also hoping to negotiate a spring cleaning day into the city’s next agreement, allowing people to dispose of large items at no extra cost on this day. Better rates are also always a goal, Carter said.

“On the whole, Waste Management does a pretty good job… but that doesn’t mean the council won’t want to explore other options.”

Among its other options are contracts with Allied Waste, or Cleanscapes, a newer contractor that contacted Carter in mid-August.

Carnation’s current agreement with Waste Management is a franchise fee model, in which the city gets free collection in return for the franchise, plus 5 percent of the contractor’s receipts from residents and businesses in the city. Last year, that brought in about $50,000 for the city, after utility taxes.

That revenue almost covers the annual cost of monitoring the city’s closed landfill, which was $57,000 in 2010. Monitoring requirements from King County and the State Department of Ecology are for four periodic tests of the site each year, to check for methane production, settling of materials, or any movement in the landfill. The landfill has had some of these issues, but the periodic test results have been identical recently, so the city has received permission to test the site only twice in 2011, for an estimated cost of $48,000.

Waste audit

Jeff Borgida opens up the lid of the recyling bin, takes a peek inside and instantly spots the problems: a sheaf of paper in a trash bag, a plastic bottle lid.

“You actually don’t need the bag,” said Borgida. “You want this stuff loose.”

As general manager for Allied Waste’s Eastside operation, Borgida takes a surprisingly hands-on approach to the waste that his company handles. He performs routine waste-bin audits, not unlike this impromptu walk around downtown Snoqualmie, to get an idea of what folks are doing right or wrong when it comes to the trash.

“Lids are tough,” said Borgida, grabbing a fat-necked plastic drink container. “It’s actually the small water bottles that are a problem. The screens are not fine enough to stop them.”

Little things like that are what slow or stymie Allied Waste’s massively mechanized Material Recovery Facility, or MRF, in Seattle. All recyclables from the Valley wind up at the MRF, which processes 700 tons per day from across the region. The sorted glass, paper, cardboard and metal wind up being sold. Allied Waste says the idea is that the proceeds offset the cost of collection.

Opening a garbage can, Borgida instantly finds things that could be diverted into a blue bin.

“Ooh, cardboard, absolutely,” he said. A paper food tray could go into the yard waste bin, or rinsed and put with recycling.

Trash generation in the region has plateaued, and Puget Sound residents are among the best recyclers in the nation, but Borgida and company continue to plug the idea of diversion. In general, the region’s residents recycle 50 percent of their waste, but Borgida said there’s probably another 30 percent that could be diverted, too.

“For us, it’s socially important,” he said. “Even if you’re not sure, put it in the recycling. We’ll figure it out for you.”

Dirty job

Waste collectors like Rod Holmes have seen their industry change from the inside. Five years ago, Allied Waste did away with the last of the two-person pick-up teams. For safety reasons, all drivers go solo, using the robot arms to pick up bins.

Haulers are also embracing green tech in the truck fleet. Half of Allied’s 88 Eastside trucks are now powered by compressed natural gas; Replacing one truck is the equivalent of taking 325 cars off the road.

When the old rear-loaders went away, Holmes swore he wouldn’t change. But when they gave him one of the new hydraulic trucks, he quickly got on board. They couldn’t pry it from him now, he says, and he doesn’t mind driving solo.

“My day can be long or short, depending on my motivation,” said Holmes, who nimbly pilots the big truck in and out of the Ridge’s nearly identical alleys.

“Those are the two most important places on this truck,” Holmes said. “You’ve always got to what is behind you all of the time, and you’ve got to know exactly what is going into that hopper.”

There’s his name, decaled on the doors.

“For eight hours, it’s my truck,” he says. “The ownership is me operating the truck safely, educating the public.”

Holmes not only meets customers on his route, but makes pitches for diversion on radio and TV as a spokesdriver for Allied.

But his primary job, five days a week, is on the road.

Most days are great, but there is the occasional downside. Valley rainstorms can come in sideways through Holmes’ open cabin. Sometimes, people don’t follow the rules, forgetting that trash and dog doo don’t belong in the yard bin.

“The worst thing that I had was half of a deer,” Holmes said. The carcass had been left in a yard bin at a downtown Snoqualmie alley.

“You don’t really have a choice, all the lids are closed,” Holmes said. “It was kind of ugly. Once it goes up, and in, it’s ‘Oh my God.”

He stopped the truck, called his dispatcher and asked for help. The end result was when the Cedar Hills compost crew scooped it out at the end of the line.

Holmes thinks constantly about safety, and warns families to keep children away from the bins. He often makes a personal connection, getting to know the people he serves.

“There are people who are truly grateful,” Holmes said. “Most people follow the rules. I’ve had some pretty good run-ins out here. Except for that deer.”

Holmes loves the reality of his job, and says he’s passed up desk jobs to stay on the road.

“I’m glad to be a part of it,” he said, proud of being a collector. “We are totally the opposite of the stigma that is garbage.”