SPRINGDALE -- Waste Management, the company that provides trash collection for residential and commercial customers, soon will run out of collection bags. The company wants to provide stickers instead.
George Wheatley, senior manager for market planning, told the City Council on Monday that the company soon will ask for a change in its contract for the service. Wheatley will return to the council with an updated contract on Aug. 2.
Wheatley said the pandemic's effects on manufacturing and the supply chain have left his company nearly without a bag to hold.
Waste Management sells to residents green bags for grass clippings and other yard waste and picks them up every Monday. The cost is $36.08 for a roll of 30.
The company also sells yellow bags to senior citizens who don't produce enough trash weekly for the 96-gallon container of traditional customers. These bags cost $2.90 each.
Waste Management instead plans to sell stickers residents can attach to bags they purchase at area stores.
And the bags don't have to be traditional garbage bags. Wheatley said a grocery store bag -- or even a bundle of limbs -- with a sticker would be collected.
"That sticker is money," Wheatley said. "The sticker tells the driver pickup for that bag has been paid."
Wheatley apologized to the council for not having a contract, charges or other details in place. The need and decision to change course came on the company quickly, he said
Nor did he have numbers telling how many customers in Springdale use bags or even how many people in Springdale have their trash collected by Waste Management.
"My push is we're running out of bags," he said. "There are a lot of moving parts to this."
The change to stickers should be easier and cheaper for customers, Wheatley said.
Currently, the Waste Management bags are available for purchase at the mayor's office or the city's Recreation Center.
Wheatley said the company will launch a website where customers have the option to order stickers that will be delivered via mail.
And customers won't have to buy a roll of 30 stickers, as they do with bags. Wheatley said they could buy five stickers or any number at a time.
Regular residential and commercial pickup soon will change, too, Wheatley said after the meeting.
Waste Management has purchased seven trucks for automated pickup. The trucks cost $400,000 per truck and will run on compressed natural gas.
Wheatley said a driver alone will collect the garbage. A mechanical arm on the truck will pick up the Waste Management bin and dump it into the truck, making collection autonomous. The company will need only a driver for the truck.
The company over the past several years has relied on temporary employment agencies to supply helpers who would carry a can to the truck, dump it and return it to the curb, Wheatley said. But temporary workers are few because of the low unemployment rate in the region and the covid-19 relief unemployment benefits have kept potential workers at home.
"We recently had to tell two cities their trash would be picked up a day late because we didn't have the workers," Wheatley said.
Waste Management serves all the major cities in Northwest Arkansas, according to a map on its website.
Springdale customers pay $16.72 a month for residential curbside garbage and recycling service, according to information supplied by Wyman Morgan, the city's director of administration and finance.