Salem residents should see delivery of their new garbage totes in April, a representative of the town’s new garbage collection contractor said Monday.
Collection with the new containers will begin on the first collection day in May.
Brian Jongetjes, president of John’s Disposal, spoke at the Salem Town Board meeting Monday night. He said he wanted to address a few common issues when a municipality is moving to an automated collection system.
Old carts — Jongetjes said there are a lot of people in town with carts from other garbage haulers. Johns needs those to be replace by its carts that fit their machinery. The lids of the Johns garbage totes also show the drivers what is inside the container — recycling or trash. Johns will take away totes from other companies, or old garbage cans, that are labeled as garbage, Jongetjes said.
Extra totes — Jongetjes said there have been some requests for extra totes. He said he would prefer that residents try out the 96-gallon totes for both recycling and trash first. Johns experience has been that the extra capacity of the recycling totes means that most regular households have plenty of trash capacity with one 96-gallon tote.
Space between totes — The automated totes emptying system means that the recycling tote and the trash tote need to have some space between them. That’s because the totes are grabbed “in a bear hug” by a claw from the truck. If the totes are too close together, the claw can knock over one tote, Jongetjes explained.
More small totes — Salem residents have requested more 48 gallon totes (as opposed to the standard 96 gallon totes) than any other municipality that Jongetjes is familiar with, he said.
Instructions on how to place and use the new totes will be attached to them when they are delivered to individual homes in April, Jongetjes said.
