Generate trash? Pay more in St. Paul.

Generate more trash? Your trash rates will go up in 2022. Opt to recycle and compost more, and practice zero waste? Your costs will increase slightly.
St. Paul residents who generate more garbage will pay more in 2022, under rates unanimously adopted Nov. 17 by the St. Paul City Council. Residents who use smaller trash carts or every other week collection will see smaller rate increases. Quarterly fee increases will range from seven cents to $5.58, depending on cart size and collection frequency.
“I heard very, very loud and clear from the council members and from residents that folks who are working hard to reduce the amount of garbage they are generating should pay a smaller amount,” said Susan Young. She manages resident and employee services for the St. Paul Department of Public Works.
Garbage collection in St. Paul has been a controversial issue for years. The 2021 increase drew objections from several residents, who said the city wasn’t doing enough to provide incentives for those who reduce waste.
The 2022 changes drew only two public comments. Both residents want city officials to do more to reduce costs for those who generate less trash, saying they are subsidizing people who throw away more trash.
St. Paul has four service levels for one to four-unit residential properties:
• Small trash cart removal every other week goes up seven cents or .1 percent, from $59.23 to $59.30.
• Small trash cart weekly collection will increase 77 cents or 1.1 percent per quarter, from $69.04 to $69.81.
• Medium trash cart weekly collection will increase $1.69 per quarter or 1.8 percent, from $94.87 to $96.56.
• The greatest increase is for households with large carts and weekly service. Quarterly fees will increase 5.5 percent or $5.58 per quarter, from $101.23 to $106.81.
Each rate plan includes varying number of large or bulky items that can be disposed of at no additional charge.
Young said opt-on fees won’t increase in 2022. Those include added bulky item charges, yard waste subscriptions, one-time yard waste collections and charges for extra bags of garage.
The city’s program administrative fee will increase slightly, from $27.12 per residential unit in 2021 to $28.08 in 2022.
Calculating the fees follows a set process, Young said. The city negotiates the fees with the garbage haulers’ consortium. Fees are affected by factors including state and county charges, fuel costs, billing costs, the consumer price index, rate of inflation, tonnage collected over the past year and the entrance or tipping fee charged for use of the disposal facility in Newport. One measure driving the increases is that the trash tonnage increased 1.16 percent from July 2020 to July 2021.
All of the trash generated in St. Paul’s organized collection program goes to Newport. Ramsey and Washington counties built the Newport facility in the 1980s to generate refuse-derived fuel for power plants.
The tipping fee is $87 per ton for 2022, up $3 from the 2021 charge. Young cautioned that a tipping fee increase to $99 per ton is projected for 2023 to pay for facility improvements.
One set of improvements is for the long-awaited residential curbside composting program, expected to start in late 2022 or early 2023. Residents will get specially designed bags that can be filled with compostable items and then placed inside trash carts. The bags will be separated from garbage at Newport.
Young said that the rate increases, on top of county and state taxes, will result in an additional $683,000 being collected in 2022. Another factor driving that increase is slight uptick in residential trash customers. The number of active garbage collection accounts grew roughly one-half percent to 72,126.