Winona County
Background
Winona County started its recycling program in 1985. The County’s program was unique due to its varied customers and wide range of program components: residential curbside collection, multi-family housing collection, commercial and institutional collection and materials collected at rural recycling drop-sites.
In 2000, the County retained the services of EcoConsilium to evaluate its recycling program, identify improvements that could be made and develop a Request for Proposals for county-wide recycling collection services.
Markets Served:
Approach
We analyzed and evaluated each of the four components of the County’s recycling collection system and made the following recommendations:
- Reduce the number of recycling sorts for residents
- Change the frequency of curbside collection to every other week
- Add one supervised recycling drop-site
- Create a system of accountability for the County to manage its recycling services contract
- Improve operations to enhance cost-effectiveness of the program
In 2001 Winona County issued the Request for Proposals we developed based on our recommendations.
Services Provided:
Results
The County evaluated proposals using the evaluation method we developed and a community-based evaluation committee. The Winona County Board of Commissioners awarded a five-year, $2.5 million contract for recycling services that began in January 2002.
For almost 20 years, Winona County has continued to use the procurement and contract documents we developed.