Waste War Special Series: Interview with Elgin City Council Member Tish Powell

In today's first episode of our Season Three deep-dive series -- Waste Wars -- Tia interviews Elgin City Council Member Tish Powell.  
  
Broadly, they discuss the city of Elgin's upcoming decision on who to hire for garbage and recycling services for the next 3, 5, or possibly even 10 years. Throughout this discussion, the following topics are discussed and explored:

• Process for securing proposals from interested waste haulers . . . aka "requests for proposal" (RFP) . . . and when the city will make the RFP available to waste haulers
• Process for evaluating and selecting one of the bids for garbage/recycling services
• Transfer Stations and whether Elgin might need to site a second one if the council chooses a waste hauler other than Waste Management (WM)
• State of our local landfills and the importance of reducing waste
• Organics Collection Program -- benefits of use and why participation is low (CLICK HERE to learn how to subscribe to this service)
• At Your Door Service for items not allowed in the garbage or recycling carts (CLICK HERE to learn more about the program; it is FREE)
• Various ideas that came out of a 2023 community-wide survey about waste/recycling (CLICK HERE to view the survey results in their entirety)
• Spoiler alert . . . the cost of trash/recycling services is likely going up in 2025 with the start of a new waste hauler contract.

In addition to being an elected member of the Elgin City Council, Tish Powell is a former city employee who managed the waste hauler contract from the staff side of things. Today, she is an employee of Republic Services, which is a business offering waste treatment and disposal, field and industrial services, E&P services and emergency response.
 
Tish is a highly knowledgeable expert on waste management, and The Elgin Watchman appreciates her willingness to come on the podcast to share her insights with its listeners.
 
Happy Elgin Earth Month . . .
In celebration of 2024 Elgin Earth Month, The Elgin Watchman is inviting YOU and every other Elgin resident to participate in a community project focused on waste reduction and recycling.

The rules are easy. Simply take a picture of an item in your house that you're not sure whether it is recyclable or garbage. Send it into the Elgin 3-1-1 center and ask them which it is -- garbage or recycling.

Share your question, answer, and picture with us here at The Elgin Watchman, and we will upload it to our blog section. By doing this, we can all learn from each other and help reduce the amount of garbage being sent to our already overloaded landfills.
 
You can get more information about this Elgin Earth Month community service project, by CLICKING HERE.

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