Does your recycling can fill up too soon? Why Sacramento won’t do weekly pickups.

Sacramento residents separate their waste into garbage, organic waste and recycling — but recycling is the only bin that’s not emptied weekly, and some people want to know why.

Sacramento resident Martin Malloy asked The Bee to look into Sacramento’s recycling collection schedule. He said the current system doesn’t reflect how much recyclable material he and his neighbors collect.

Malloy’s question opens the lid on the city’s history with weekly recycling pickup and why that didn’t last. In the end, it boils down to money.

History behind Sacramento’s recycling schedule

Both the city and the unincorporated area of Sacramento County empty recycling carts filled with cardboard and paper, glass bottles and jars, plastic containers and metal cans every other week.

The city changed recycling pickup from weekly to every other week in 2013 to offset rising collection costs and the lower market value of recyclable materials, said Jesa David, a spokeswoman for Sacramento’s Recycling and Solid Waste Division, in an email to The Bee.

“Switching to every other week helped save overhead costs,” she said.

But there’s more to the story.

When Malloy learned that organic waste would be collected once a week along with his garbage, he said, he questioned why the same schedule wasn’t applied to the bi-weekly recycling program.

“I and most people that I live around have more recycling than anything, and by doing it every other week, it kind of just encourages people to put their recycling in the garbage,” he said.

The city began its recycling program in the 1990s on an every-other-week schedule, said Erin Treadwell, integrated waste compliance manager for Sacramento’s Recycling and Solid Waste Division.

In the mid-2000s, the city switched to weekly pickup after noticing that it could potentially profit from the large volume of recyclables it was collecting.

But what really happened is the weekly schedule doubled the cost of service and the city only gained about 10% more in collected recyclables, Treadwell said. After a couple of a years, the city switched back to its bi-weekly collection schedule to cover its deficit.

“The City Council at the time did not want to raise rates ... so we felt at that time the most prudent thing was to go back to every-other-week recycling,” she said.

That was around a decade ago. Since then, Sacramento implemented a new organic waste recycling service and raised homeowners’ collection fees to pay for the new compost law. All Sacramento homeowners are paying more for garbage, recycling and yard/organic waste pickup.

“Crushing cans and plastic bottles and breaking down cardboard boxes helps get the air out of the recyclables and goes a long way toward making space in the containers,” David wrote in an email to The Bee.

Another option is to purchase another bin. The city charges $2.57 for each additional recycling cart, and Sacramento County’s extra recycling bins run $5.50 each per month, according to its website.

Since switching back to the every-other-week pickup schedule in 2013, Treadwell said, the city has conducted two citywide scientific surveys, asking residents if they want to return to weekly recycling pickup coupled with a price increase. She said the citywide consensus was no.

“For most folks, they’re like: ‘It’s fine, I don’t need it, I don’t want to pay more because my neighbors can’t manage their recycling,’” Treadwell said.

But Malloy, who lives in the city with his wife and two kids, said he’s already doing what it takes to make their 96-gallon recycling cart work.

“I and and some neighbors I know have gotten warnings for slightly overfilled recycling bins,” he said.

This story was originally published July 19, 2022 at 5:00 AM.