LITTLE ROCK — Normally, Mayor Mark Stodola loves to see his constituents eagerly embrace a city plan.
Not so much this week.
Stodola, seeing new, bright-green bins with yellow lids lining city streets on his way to City Hall, found himself firing off an e-mail asking residents to back off using the bins - for now.
“I noticed today several citizens putting out their new recycling carts for pick-up. ... The new service by Waste Management will not start until April 2nd. ... They are still delivering carts around the city,” he said in part in an electronic newsletter sent to6,000 subscribers.
Why the confusion: lost, ignored and, regarding one plan, missing notices.
On Wednesday morning Stodola chuckled at the thought. “You know how that is,” he said. “The person who takes out the trash may not have even seen the letter.”
Residents will be able to put everything from newspapers and milk cartons to pots and pans and even the old 18-gallon bins that people previously used for sorting recyclable materials into a single, wheeled bin.
Jordan Johnson, a spokesman for Waste Management, which was hired by the city to run the program, said he found out firsthand Tuesday how some of the company’s notification letters - sent out before bins were delivered - slipped through the cracks, after he noticed neighbors with their carts out and asked them about it.
“In one case, the wife had put the letter on the refrigerator, but the husband is the one who takes the recycling to the curb,” Johnson said. “The husband never saw the letter on the refrigerator.”
And it didn’t help that plans to put a sticky note on every new bin fell through.
George Wheatley, a Waste Management spokesman based in Northwest Arkansas, said the company ran out of money to put the notices on each bin after spending $90,000 on an initial mailing.
Still, not everyone is enthusiastic about the 64-gallon bin on wheels. The city said it has gotten a few calls from residents asking the city to take back the bins because they don’t have the space for them or find then too big to manage.
Such requests won’t be honored for a few weeks so crews can focus on getting the program up and running on April 2 for most of Little Rock and April 9 for the rest of the city plus North Little Rock and Sherwood, said Melinda Glasgow, Little Rock’s recycling coordinator.
Residents can expect to get a brochure with more details and a pickup schedule as well as registration cards for an incentive program that awards points for recycled items.
Those points can be redeemed through the New York-based Recycle bank for coupons, gift cards, goods and services from more than 3,000 national and local vendors.
Officials hope the mail will end up in the recycle bins, but not before the details have been committed to memory.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/08/2012