The city of Kent might require commercial businesses to use Republic Services for recycling pickup rather than choosing a recycling company on the open market.

But before the City Council adopts that requirement under a solid waste contract extension with Republic, it will wait for results of a survey in early in 2016 of the nearly 1,900 commercial customers to see what those businesses would like to do.

“I really like the idea of a survey and appreciate Republic’s willingness to work with us on that,” said Councilman Dennis Higgins at the council’s Dec. 7 Public Works Committee meeting. “I think as that survey goes forward my educated guess is the commercial customers will see how it pencils out and will see that is advantageous. I anticipate we will move forward with it.”

The full council is scheduled to vote Jan. 5 on a contract extension to March 2023 with Republic Services, with the options for two, two-year extensions. The council will decide next year after the survey results whether to add what’s known as commercial embedded recycling to the contract.

The city’s current contract with Republic started in April 2011 and expires in March 2018. Republic asked the city to consider an amendment to add embedded commercial recycling during talks to revise and extend the contract. Republic provides garbage service to businesses.

Business customers can hire their own recycling company under the current contract. City staff told the council they didn’t have enough information to know whether most commercial customers would benefit or not if required to contract with Republic because companies pay a variety of fees to haulers to take away recyclables.

“We are not able to fully assess what the impact or benefits would be to all commercial customers if implemented,” said Kelly Peterson, city special projects manager, to the Public Works Committee.

Republic would raise commercial garbage rates in order to cover the recycling costs, but some companies would save because they no longer would have a separate recycling bill and could reduce costs even further by recycling more items and lowering garbage collection fees.

Council President Dana Ralph said she favors a contract extension but wants to know more about how the recycling requirement would impact businesses.

“I have been concerned about the embedded recycling only because we have limited data,” Ralph said. “With the survey, it will allow us to address that and make a decision that is best for the majority of our businesses in Kent.”

Republic would perform a waste audit with a business to help it see whether it can divert more items from garbage to recycling and possibly lower its garbage rate with less to be collected. Whether that new rate makes up for not paying a separate recycling fee will depend on the business.

“Some customers may see an increase,” Peterson said. “Every customer is different, that’s why we are doing a survey.”

Higgins expects most business customers will like the proposal.

“I think the survey results as each customer looks at their overall situation will be overwhelming in favor,” Higgins said. “We have seen in other cities embedded commercial recycling is working for lowering overall costs for commercial customers and reducing the waste stream and getting more and more material into recycling.”

Residential rates will stay the same under the new contract. Customers, however, who violate recycling and yard waste rules by contaminating those containers with garbage, could face additional fees under new language in the contract.

“Residential rates are based on the size of your garbage cart,” Peterson said. “We are seeing some people are getting the lowest garbage (rate with smallest container) and contaminating the recycling and yard waste carts.”

An effort to educate customers about what can be recycled will be part of the program to cut down on contamination. If a hauler sees obvious contamination in a bin, they will tag the bin and not collect it and Republic will work with the customer to correctly sort items.

“I know it happens,” Higgins said about rule violators. “I know it’s not widespread but happens. It’s not good for Republic, Kent or our environment. It takes away the overall goal of reducing the waste stream and getting materials into the recycling stream.”