The population growth in Boise and in Ada County has had some unexpected -- or at least some unplanned -- results. One that most people don’t think about is the landfill, where the contents of our weekly trash pickup go. When the current landfill location was opened for operations in 2007, the concept was that it would be sufficient for nine decades, taking us through 2097.
The 2,700 acre facility -- that is over 4 square miles -- is divided into various cells, or locations, filling up faster than planned. When the landfill opened in 2007, the population in Ada County was a little over 370,000. That population has since increased by about 35%, topping out at a little over a half million people.
The landfill that was supposed to last ninety years might now only last sixty -- and that might even be quite optimistic.
I thought they picked up trash on Monday.
Shortly after we moved to Boise in 1993, we were out for a mid-week drive when our daughter spotted a truck picking up trash. “What are they doing?” she asked. “Picking up trash,” was my logical response. “I thought they picked up trash on Monday,” she replied. Monday was the trash pickup day where we had lived in Southern California, and that was all she had ever known. So, to her, Monday was the logical day to pick up trash, being that it was right after the weekend.
Trash pickup is a five-day-a-week operation in Boise and the rest of Ada County. And it might become more than that, one way or another.
A 2019 report from the Ada County Commissioners laid out a projected growth plan that doesn’t bode for current infrastructures, landfill included.
The chart from 2019 shows that the population for Ada County at that time was 487,570. That population was expected to increase over 38% to 674,337 by 2040. That projection has since been revised to 689,726 -- a 41.4% increase. The Commissioners’ staggering “Buildout Population,” the number of people who could live in the county if every possible building space were built and occupied is almost 1.5 million people. Wow -- that would put a huge straing on everything, not just landfill.
So, what can be done?
Several years ago, our weekly pickup went to a three-bin system. Previously, we would put trash out in 33-gallon trash barrels that all the big box and hardware stores carry. Looking around the neighborhood on a pickup day showed a ramshackle assortment of barrels and other containers. One person drove the truck, and another picked up the container and emptied it into the back of truck. That wasn’t an efficient system, both in terms of manpower and time. Items would get spilled into the street; some people would put too much weight into the barrels, and old barrels would crack and fall apart.
And that was just for trash.
Recycling meant another two-person truck operation where we would separate recyclables (glass, plastic, tin, aluminum, paper) into separate bags that would be emptied into separate bins on the recycling truck. That was even less efficient than the trash truck process.
The new process includes a bin (the grey top) for trash; a blue bin for [certain] recycling materials, and a green top pin for composting materials. Trash and composting are picked up weekly, while recycling is one an every other week schedule.
Trash still goes to the landfill. Recycling goes to a recycling center (but only certain materials), and then the composting materials (yard trimmings) are taken to an area where they are composted and made available to the public for free.
It is estimated that this new three-bin process saves about 15-20% of items going into the landfill. But even those significant savings are not enough to keep the landfill from filling up much faster than planned.
What are you doing to keep items out of the landfill?