New automated trash cans on the way

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NAUGATUCK — The Joint Boards of Mayor and Finance voted to expand the automated trash collection in the borough at a special meeting Thursday night.

The borough will purchase just over 6,000 new trash and recycling cans to serve about 3,000 additional households, according to Public Works Director James Stewart.

About half of the borough’s households are already on the automated trash pickup. This purchase would add about another 30 percent to that list, leaving the last 20 percent to be purchased in the future, Stewart said.

The borough will also buy a second truck to pick up the cans, replacing a manual trash truck on its last legs, Stewart said.

“We felt that if we need to replace that truck, we need to replace it with an automated system,” he said.

According to Stewart, the total cost for this phase of the program is $575,000. The trash cans, which cost about $45 per can, will be bought outright while the truck will be paid for over 5 years.

The purchase will come out of the 2012-13 budget, with the new cans rolling out sometime next summer, Stewart said.

If the borough had waited until next year’s budget cycle to approve the program, it would be delayed it until 2013, he said.

Stewart said savings from reductions in personnel and trash and increases in recycling will pay for the program in a little over five years.

He said the new trash cans limit the amount of garbage people can throw away and make it easier to recycle because all materials can be comingled.

The new automated system only requires one employee per truck versus three drivers for garbage and two for recycling on the manual trucks, Stewart said.