Residential garbage rates are going up $2.90 a month in Hillsboro following a City Council vote last week. The change was prompted in part by new requirements in China for recycled goods.

Waste collection in Hillsboro is handled by a handful of private companies, but the rates are set by the city as part of a franchise agreement. Rates are the same city-wide.

The increases, effective as of June 1, are as follows:

  • $2.90 for a 35-gallon residential roll cart service customer, comprised of $1.25 for the rate review and $1.65 for recycling processing.
  • $2.75 for a 35-gallon commercial roll cart service customer, comprised of $1.10 for the rate review and $1.65 for recycling processing.
  • $21.69 for a 2-yard weekly commercial service customer, comprised of $11.05 for the rate review and $10.64 for recycling processing.

Here’s a city chart showing how the new Hillsboro rates compare to nearby cities:

Franchise rates are reviewed every year, but the increase is higher than usual this year because of increased labor costs here and policy changes in China. Here’s Senior Project Manager Peter Brandom, writing in a memo to City Council:

Additionally, in late 2017 a significant disruption to recycling markets resulted from multiple announcements from the Chinese government, where the majority of comingled recycling, namely plastics and paper, have historically been sold. Among the announced changes was a requirement that recyclables sold to the Chinese market contain no more than 0.3% contamination of non-recyclable materials. With most material recovery facilities (MRF) in Oregon and beyond typically able to achieve ~5% contamination rates, MRFs have altered operations, adding manual processes, to reduce contamination rates. However, experts agree that 0.3% contamination is not realistically achievable with current sorting systems. This, along with efforts to identify alternative markets, has resulted in significant unanticipated cost increases for recycling, with resulting impacts on the franchised companies.

The increase was on the minds of counsellors during a work session about a potential compost pickup service—some councillors were concerned about raising prices to launch the program after this increase. We’ll dive into that more later this week.