Gainesville City Commission awards residential solid waste contract to GFL after other haulers withdraw

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – During the afternoon session of the June 4 Gainesville City Commission meeting, Commissioners awarded a contract to GFL for residential solid waste and recycling services after other haulers withdrew from the process.

Residential solid waste and recycling agreement

Staff reviewed the results of an Invitation to Negotiate (ITN) for residential solid waste and recycling services, with an optional food waste proposal. Three responses were initially received, but two were later withdrawn, leaving GFL as the only hauler. Staff negotiated a 10-year contract with two 5-year optional renewals. 93% of GFL’s fleet is fueled by compressed natural gas (CNG), and the company is required to have a dedicated fleet for the City of Gainesville. GFL will haul waste to the New River landfill instead of taking it to the Leveda Brown Transfer Center, which is owned by Alachua County. The rates will increase at a rate of 4% in years two through five, followed by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in years six through ten, capped at 4%. 

Contamination rate in recyclables must stay under 3%

GFL will be required to tag any contaminated recycling bins and must spend $5,000 per year in media or educational campaigns related to residential recycling, along with $20,000 per year to support City-sponsored events. If the contamination rate of recyclables exceeds 3%, the hauler will pay for the disposal of the contaminated materials. 

Commissioner Casey Willits said he thought people would be “shocked, and I think they’re going to start getting upset” if their recycling bin is tagged instead of being collected. He said he didn’t think residents were “mentally prepared to understand that they’ve been wishcasting this whole time… They think they’re being a great participant in recycling… To be clear, when we say ‘contamination,’ we don’t mean that there’s a bunch of food waste in recycling; we also mean that there’s a clamshell [package].”

Public Works Operations Manager Jarod Lloyd: “We’re not trying to shock the residents; we’re just trying to educate and make sure that our recyclable stream is appropriate.”

Public Works Operations Manager Jarod Lloyd said, “It’s going to be painful at first, but our long-term goal is to get people to recycle and recycle correctly, so that it doesn’t wind up in a landfill… We’re not trying to shock the residents; we’re just trying to educate and make sure that our recyclable stream is appropriate.”

Lloyd said the historical contamination rates were consistently around 3%, but then they spiked to 13%, and they’ve come back down around 9% after “some education stuff… We’re trying to just wrangle it back and get it back into that 3% realm.”

Commissioner James Ingle said, “I can’t imagine a better education campaign than getting turned around a couple times at the curb, but… once people know, they’ll know.”

Hauling directly to the New River landfill instead of Leveda Brown Transfer Station

Lloyd said New River was willing to confirm rates for the next 10 years, but the County’s contract with New River ends in 2028, so future rates for the County are not known at this time.

Mayor Harvey Ward said he hoped that any motion would include reaching out to the County one more time “out of intergovernmental courtesy.”

Why did the other haulers drop out?

Commissioner Ed Book asked why there were only three responses to the ITN and then two of them withdrew, and Lloyd said he couldn’t speak on behalf of the haulers, “but what I can gather is that some of them used, you know, diesel, very traditional fuels.” He said the fuel source was just part of the overall grade, and “there was a lot of different ways to win the proposal,… but they dropped out before we could even start negotiating.” Interim Chief Operating Officer Brian Singleton said it may have been because they could not provide the level of service GFL was offering at a competitive price.

The City previously issued an ITN in 2021, but the award negotiations were delayed by a lawsuit, which was eventually settled. However, once the lawsuit was settled, the negotiations team determined that it wasn’t feasible to meet the contract requirement of 100% electric vehicles within three years, so the negotiations were terminated. As a result, Lloyd told the Commission in December 2024, the current ITN would “leave our fuel types open; instead of just locking them down to one fuel source, we would like to see what everybody has to offer… We want to create a rubric and score the fuel types based off of the emissions.”

Food waste collection

Lloyd said that food waste collection would require an 18%-38% increase in residential solid waste rates (about $9.50 per month), and based on the City’s pilot program and results in other cities, they believe that only about 20% of households would participate (for comparison, the City’s recycling rate is 35-40%). He said the food waste currently goes to New River landfill for $47 per ton, while if only 20% of households participated in a food waste program, that would cost $3,100 per ton, subsidized by other residents.

Commissioner Bryan Eastman: “Austin has it, every city in California is required to do curbside composting, as well. This is not that strange, nationally.”

Commissioner Bryan Eastman said the Zero Waste Committee had worked “for years… to try to find the best way to do city-wide curbside composting, like what they do in Cambridge;  Austin has it, every city in California is required to do curbside composting, as well. This is not that strange, nationally. I don’t think anyone in the state of Florida does it, but the City of Gainesville has been moving forward.” He said he wanted to keep the City’s options open, even though in an era with increasing fees and taxes, “it may be the wrong time to do it right now, but I think it is something we need to be looking for.”

Motion

Eastman made a motion to award a 10-year contract to GFL for an exclusive residential curbside and municipal solid waste and recycling agreement, not to exceed $13 million a year, and approve a Specified Source Selection to New River Solid Waste Association for disposal services for 10 years, not to exceed $1.4 million a year; however, he added the “caveat” that staff should continue working with Alachua County and New River “for the best path forward.” A third part of the motion directed staff to “preserve contract flexibility for future food waste service expansion and return by the end of the year with updated food waste pricing and options, including co-location and a phased roll-out and drop-off sites.” He said the third part was a request for data by the end of the calendar year. Ingle seconded the motion.

City gets recycling credits from New River

Singleton reminded Commissioners that if the County contracted with a landfill other than New River, the City would lose its recycling credits for New River’s capture of methane; those credits increase the City’s adjusted recycling rate by 20 percentage points. Eastman said that because of the fiscal impact of losing that credit and “for the benefit of the environment,” he wanted the City to continue sending its waste to New River. 

Ingle asked whether the food waste contract would necessarily be exclusive: “For instance, if O-Town wanted to set up drop-off points or they had some better option for curbside collection, have we got the option to look at those things?” Singleton said the contract could be crafted in that way, but if the City entered into a contract with GFL for food waste collection, it would be a long-term agreement.

Singleton said Alachua County is currently working with O-Town for drop-off locations, and the City is monitoring that program to see what the participation rate is, “to see if that’s even a feasible option.”

Singleton also said it’s more cost-effective for GFL to haul directly to New River, as opposed to hauling to the Leveda Brown Transfer Station and having Alachua County haul it to New River.

In response to a question from Willits about how it could be more cost-effective to send individual trucks to New River, as opposed to tractor-trailers of trash, Singleton said that because GFL’s fleet is fueled by CNG, which has lower carbon emissions than diesel, and Alachua County hauls the trash in diesel trucks, “it is more environmentally friendly for GFL to haul to New River.”

The motion passed 5-1, with Willits in dissent and Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker absent.