The county’s Public Works Department formally pitched a plan to commissioners Wednesday night to overhaul the way garbage is collected and to start a curbside recycling program.
Officials want to roll out an $88,000 pilot program from December through June that would affect 800 residents and include 800 solid waste carts and 200 recycling carts.
"We are going to take baby steps because these are large changes," Public Works Director Dave Schultz told the council.
The county's existing waste-removal contract ends June 30, 2015, and the city is hoping to transition to standard-sized trash cans with attached lids that will be issued to residents who participate in municipal garbage removal.
By moving to a uniform size, the city can outfit garbage trucks with an arm that will pick up trash cans. The savings from those efficiencies would go toward a curbside recycling program, which Public Works hopes will begin in July.
If all the changes are made, residents would have 96-gallon garbage bins and those opting to recycle would get 65-gallon bins for those materials.
Officials say 7,250 households in the county, or 58 percent, have trash cans without lids and 375 households, or 3 percent, have no containers at all. They also say 55 percent of trash in each household is recyclable.
Schultz said the program would save landfill space and would make Butte-Silver Bow County cleaner.
“This is how all the other larger cities in Montana handle their garbage and it’s what we should probably do as well,” he said. “We can collect for far less costs and equally important, we can clean up the town.