This commentary is by John W. Casella, chairman and CEO of Rutland-based Casella Waste Systems.
Burlington City Councilor Jane Stromberg recently took aim at Casella Waste Systems in her VTDigger commentary in support of a municipally controlled waste collection system in Burlington.
As the largest waste and recycling services provider in Vermont, Casella is an easy target for Ms. Stromberg to further this proposed city legislation, but the reality is that it impacts far more than one company.
Casella, a company founded on the entrepreneurial spirit and determined grit that makes Vermont special, has grown to become a national leader in sustainable resource management and is still headquartered in Vermont, providing more than 650 jobs and tens of millions of dollars in payroll and benefits to Vermont workers. These jobs include back-office support functions for our entire footprint of operations, including a customer care center that was leaned on to help facilitate the state’s recent rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine.
In addition, Casella has implemented career path programs and educational opportunities — such as a fully funded commercial driver’s license school designed to attract new workers to the state and to help keep Vermonters here — all while contributing more than $11 million in host community fees, taxes, and other benefits to the state.
Apparently, Ms. Stromberg has determined that isn’t quite enough and that Casella has grown too big. The irony of all ironies here is that the proposed policy would directly impact our essential frontline workers and potentially put every small waste hauler and fledgling food waste collection service in the Burlington area out of business, while Casella would survive.
Remember just last year, when one of the benefits of moving forward with the landfill food waste ban was to help spur the growth of small food waste collection businesses? Now those new companies, which have likely only begun to see a return on their initial investments, become collateral damage in an unnecessary experiment.
All the economic and emissions calculations in the study Ms. Stromberg cites assumes that every Burlington resident utilizes a private waste hauler for curbside trash, recycling, and food waste collection, and that all those haulers utilize diesel trucks for weekly pickup. The reality for both of those assumptions is “they don’t.”
In addition to operating a fleet in the Burlington area that is predominantly powered by compressed natural gas, Casella will also be piloting two new electric collection vehicles in Vermont starting this year.
And the type of fuel is only one part of the equation.
Another of several pieces that Ms. Stromberg and other proponents of this plan fail to mention is the fact that haulers invest heavily in route optimization to ensure that the most efficient routes are taken. For example, an optimized Casella route currently picks up every customer on the route regardless of the customer’s designation. The mom-and-pop store, the local restaurant, the six-unit apartment, the single-family home, and the duplex all get picked up by the same truck.
Under the proposed model, only residential dwellings of less than four units would be mandated to utilize the municipal service. The proposed model suggests that Casella should now skip the single-family home and the duplex so that the Burlington DPW can put another truck on the road to service those customers.
And what of the Burlington renter living in a duplex or triplex, who has a small home compost for their garden and schleps their trash and recyclables to the transfer station each week to save the cost of having collection service come to their home? Now their landlord will be forced to utilize this new service, passing those costs along to the renter and making housing in Burlington even more unaffordable than it already is.
Finally, almost as if the costs and logistics shouldn’t matter, Ms. Stromberg notes that “…the city will have some admittedly hefty short-term costs, and of course, there will be issues along the way, as is the case with any public project.”
The conservative estimate in the DPW study is a $6 million upfront price tag to get started, followed by another $5 million in annual costs to fund the enterprise.
These figures are both grossly underestimated and assume a best-case scenario when it comes to capital and human resources.
The waste and recycling industry is experiencing record inflation rates for trucks, parts, containers and fuel. On top of that, there were significant challenges in the labor market even prior to Covid-19, with a shortage of drivers and mechanics due to a retiring workforce and hesitancy among younger populations to consider a frontline career in our field.
The study also wildly underestimates the need for redundancy in equipment, employees, and in other resources that are necessary in the event of surge periods such as college move-in and move-out or natural disasters, worker vacancies, paid time off and Family and Medical Leave Act, and equipment failure.
For example, we are currently seeing a 6-to-12-month lead time on new trucks and parts. This demands redundancy to ensure customers are serviced on time in the event of equipment failure.
Casella’s size and scale is what has allowed us to weather the challenges of Covid-19, to step up and assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, to combat labor shortages, provide great wages for Vermont workers (the highest on average in the state, according to a recent Money Magazine study), and to invest in economically and environmentally sustainable solutions to our modern society’s waste production such as the new de-packaging facility in Williston.
The people of Burlington deserve better.
They deserve a city council focused on the issues that impact their livelihood. They deserve to be protected while they are enjoying downtown with their friends and families.
They deserve to have their businesses incentivized to do more and better business in service to their customers. They deserve economically and environmentally sustainable solutions for their modern lives to be brought to the table for discussion.
They deserve better infrastructure and more affordable housing. And they deserve the freedom to choose their service providers based on their own individual living circumstances.
