Evanston’s Environment Board meeting on Jan. 9 lasted nearly three hours — and included two presentations on city matters.
With most existing city waste haul agreements coming up for renewal in the final quarter of 2025, Brian Zimmerman, the city’s solid waste coordinator, gave a preview of what the city may look for in the next contracts dealing with single-family homes and small multi-unit buildings. That would include offering residents smaller carts, making yard and food waste service year round and improving the process for removing large amounts of waste.
Steve Ruger, one of Evanston’s two deputy city managers, gave a presentation on how the city departments are — and aren’t — holding themselves accountable for environmental sustainability goals. He said while the city made some progress, some accountability processes are still being developed, and he hoped to update the board on his progress later this year.
Waste haul contract
Evanston currently contracts with Groot to provide refuse and yard waste removal services for single-family homes and small multi-unit residential buildings, as well as collect yard waste from condos. The city contracts with Lakeshore Recycling to handle waste removal from condos, and the city itself handles recycling for all three housing types. With the new contracts, Zimmerman said, the city wants refuse and yard waste removal services as one contract rather than two separate contracts that currently happen to be performed by the same company.
While most waste removal contracts are coming up for renewal in the fall of this year, the presentation focused on homes and small multi-family buildings contracts.
Zimmerman said the city’s goal is to keep at least 50% of the waste out of the landfills within the next five years. According to his presentation, the city managed to achieve only half of that in 2023.
The city currently offers 95-gallon and 65-gallon carts. The new contract would include 35-gallon cart option. Board and Council member Jonathan Nieuwsma (4th Ward) said this was a good idea.
“We fill up our recycling consistently, but our garbage is not even half-full,” he said.
The new contract would require the provider to give residential customers at least a 35-gallon cart for yard waste and food scraps, unless the customer asks the city to opt out. This is designed to encourage more residents to take advantage of the service.
The new contractor would take over responsibility for handling yard waste stickers, and it would need to provide yard waste service year-round. Board member Olin Wilson-Thomas said he supported it, because he believed it was harder to encourage residents to keep composting if the option is only available some months of the year.
In another notable change, the city would require the contractor to set up routes to collect special items and large amounts of waste three days a week, instead of requiring residents to call 311 to schedule bulk pick-up. The service charge would be included in the monthly bill.
“That would remove messy billing or fighting with neighbors about fly-dumping issues,” Zimmerman said. “And typically, what we found in our data is special pickup routes require less staff.”
The city may also ask the contractor to take over Christmas tree collection. Wilson-Thomas asked whether the trees would be composted, and Zimmerman confirmed they would be, noting that Christmas trees are technically yard waste, and the state law already prohibits sending yard waste to landfills.
The presentation acknowledged the waste service rates will most likely change with the new contract. But when board member Katarina Topalov pressed Zimmerman on specifics, he said he couldn’t speak to it until the city sees what kind of bids it gets back.
“The hauler might have a much different rate and I don’t know what it’s going to look like,” he said.
The city is also planning to make the food waste contract nonexclusive, so multiple providers would be able to bid on it.
Board member Gul Agha wondered if that would “increase costs because then you have the more people running around picking up fewer [bins].” Zimmerman said it wouldn’t be an issue, since there simply isn’t as much demand as there is for other forms of waste removal.
According to the presentation, the current food scrap contract has 807 customers in Evanston, 721of whom are residents. The program collects around 10,100 gallons a month.
Once the city goes out to bid and the bids come in, the contract will go to the city council for approval.
Accountability framework presentation
The issue of city sustainability goals surfaced at the previous meetings of the Environment Board and Climate Action & Resilience Plan (CARP) Implementation Taskforce subcommittee. While discussing goals for the next year, some members wondered how the city was doing on existing goals, and how the city was being held accountable.
Ruger and fellow deputy city manager Cárina E. Sanchez started their jobs last summer. Ruger told the Environment Board that, in the months since, the city has increased the number of city-owned electric vehicles, with Nieuwsma mentioning that Evanston purchased five more vehicles, bringing the overall number to 19. He also said the city is working to convert streetlights to LED light bulbs, but funding issues can get in the way.
Ruger also touted the Healthy Buildings Ordinance, which is scheduled to go before the city council on Monday.
But he also said some processes to ensure accountability aren’t there yet, and it is something he’s working on.
“What we’re lacking is robust policies, and that’s where we can enforce accountability,” Ruger said.
He said one of the things the council would see more of is how proposals would meet the 2018 CARP goals. He also said he would like to revamp the city procurement code and send it to Environment Board for review.
Ruger said he believed that the management should do more to push city employees to be more environmentally friendly.
“I still see a lot of people bring plastic bottles, and I’m not going to ban it,” he said. “I think we would like to encourage our employees do less of that.”
Board co-chair Michelle Redfield said given that the city “haven’t heard a person in [Ruger’s] role in years,” she understood how accountability would take time.
But Board member James Cahan pressed the deputy manager on when he could report on the progress.
“Give me some time to work on that and I’ll come back in a few months,” Ruger said.
Environment Board reviews waste haul contract, accountability report is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.