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“The Solid Waste District will be underwriting on a very short-term basis, for three months, a promotional program with Rumpke to offer curbside recycling to households in Fairfield Twp. that are not currently signed up to participate in curbside recycling,” she said. “Part of the impetus for this program is to increase the number of households with access to recycling.”
Households that choose to stay with the Rumpke recycling program will be billed about $11 per quarter.
Roughly 26 percent of households using Rumpke’s trash service in Fairfield Twp. currently participate in curbside recycling. That’s compared to 42 percent of Liberty Twp. residents and 41 percent of West Chester Twp. residents. Rumpke services roughly 95 percent of Butler County, said Fiehrer Flaig.
“We have a room for growth,” she said. “We’d like to move that bar up and potentially sign up 800 to 900 new households in Fairfield Twp.”
The U.S. Census estimates more than 7,500 households in Fairfield Twp.
By increasing the number of curbside recycling customers, it should reduce the use of the three recycling drop boxes in the township.
“We have encountered an incredible amount of use at these sites and we’d like to deflect some of that usage to the household so that people have a more convenient way to recycle,” said Fiehrer Flaig.
The deadline to sign up for the program is Sept. 30, though Fiehrer Flaig said “if you sign up the first week of October, that’s also fine.”
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Trustee Joe McAbee questioned why rates of recycling in Liberty and West Chester townships is almost twice as high as Fairfield Twp.
Fiehrer Flaig said, “it’s a combination of things.”
“I think a lot of people have signed up over the years and there’s more saturation,” she said in those communities. “I think we haven’t done as much outreach (in Fairfield Twp.), and that’s on me, to increase the amount of outreach and let them know curbside is available.”
She also said the drop boxes — which are at Shaffer’s Run Community Park, next to the Tylersville Road fire station and outside the fire department headquarters on Morris Road — may have “disincentivized” people to sign up for curbside.
But people recycle more at the curb than in the drop boxes, which have been successful, she said.
Fairfield Twp. Trustee Shannon Hartkemeyer is a curbside recycling customer and said, “There have even been weeks where we put more in our recycling bin than our trash bin.”
“This is a good thing and I think it’s a good thing for Fairfield Twp., and for everyone,” she said of the recycling program.
Fiehrer Flaig said she’ll soon be out in Liberty and West Chester townships to offer a similar initiative as they are also targeted communities for the Butler County Recycling and Solid Waste District.
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