Bulky Waste Pickup

Anyone have any good insight as to why SO residents get the shaft so badly on disposing of bulky waste? We either have six (only six!) days where we can schlep our old furniture, mattresses and the like to the DPW or pay $75 to pick up a limited number of items a few times a year. This is far worse than what most neighboring towns provide. Most seem to offer at least once a month pickup from homes at no charge (up to like six pieces or something), even Maplewood. SO Disposal is a ripoff (I think I was quoted like $150 for one sofa). I assume that our subpar and fee=based service is cost efficient and helps keeps or taxes oh so low. But is there anything else that can explain why the town doesn't provide what seems to be a pretty basic service in many neighboring towns?


You write that you expect the existing service helps keep taxes low.  Does that mean that pick-up in SO is paid for by municipal taxes?  In the town I live in, trash pick up is not a municipal service.  Residents contract directly with a trash hauling service. That may help explain the difference in service.


As a person who is very handy around the house I find it very hard to keep my garage uncluttered with things to be discarded unless I come out my pocket often. I've grown used to it but I get the impression that not many people in the area are diyers and get most of their appliances removed with a new delivery or whatever contractors are hired remove their own debris. I can only throw my old dining room set away by putting out a single item 1 time per week lol. A 15 week project


In East Orange, bulk trash can be put out once a week and gets picked up by the City for free.  Up until this year, you could put out as much as you had to get rid of.  As of 2020, we're now limited to 3 items a week.  I have yet to get any clarity on how that applies to apartment buildings or multiple dwellings.

My landlord has yet to get a handle on this..  There's a lot of turnover in our building, and at the middle and end of the month, the parking lot can look like a real junk yard.  Even in East Orange, my rent is far to high to live in a junk yard.  I continue to try to get clarification from the landlord and the DPW..  Seems I shouldn't have to get in the middle of this, but such is life over here.


South Orange waste pickup is private, though I'm not sure if there is another option besides SO Disposal, which if fine and I really have no problem with the service they offer on that. I just wish that there was some option to put out, say, a broken chair or a couple items once a month, as they really only take bagged household trash. It seems like every town I've lived in has had some free bulk waste pick up offered. I'm not saying put out a whole house worth of furniture but an item here or there without having to pay someone. 

I think it would be nice to even be able to drop off a limited number of bulky pieces at DPW more often than SIX days a year. 

We have the worst of both worlds. Expensive pickup and a very limited window to drop off yourself. 

Again, does anyone know if South Orange offered this in the past and why they may have gotten rid of it?


I've been in SO for over 30 years and yes, there used to be, if I remember, two bulk pickups annually, but that was stopped years ago and have no idea why


vermontgolfer said:

I've been in SO for over 30 years and yes, there used to be, if I remember, two bulk pickups annually, but that was stopped years ago and have no idea why

 Oh, I LOVED that!  I don't remember if Maplewood and South Orange picked up on the same day, but the night before was like a town-wide free yard sale.  Lots of cars and trucks moving very slowly through town.  Lots of perfectly good stuff that would otherwide end up in a landfill. 

Even in E.O., I picked up a perfectly good wooden child's step stool with room for storage -- from my parking lot after someone moved out.  Brought it in, cleaned it up, painted and decoupaged it with butterflies from a calendar -- and sold it for $40!

I so often see things that could be easily re-used or donated to charity if people took the time.  Great for freecycling.


In Maplewood, for a long time we had two bulk pick-up days per year which then morphed into bulk drop-off days at the municipal recycling site.  Within the past few years, our local garbage haulers (Waste Industries and Waste Management) started offering bulk pick-up on a limited basis.


Any idea how it came about that Waste Industries and WM started offering that? Honestly, that's the minimum I'd want. The ability to set out one or two items a month to get taken away. We have like broken chairs and tables cluttering our garage, or even just a big broken toy, that doesn't easily fit into a garbage can or bag and is just a huge hassle to get rid of. 


I think our entire dpw department is about 18 people.  Adding this service would be a pretty big strain.   Anything they collect has to go into a dumpster and be paid for, as well.  I think soon other towns are going to stop what they are doing, which, frankly, they should.  What if we were responsible for paying for all of the trash we generate?  I think that is a good idea.  


FilmCarp said:

I think our entire dpw department is about 18 people.  Adding this service would be a pretty big strain.   Anything they collect has to go into a dumpster and be paid for, as well.  I think soon other towns are going to stop what they are doing, which, frankly, they should.  What if we were responsible for paying for all of the trash we generate?  I think that is a good idea.  

The DPW doesn't collect garbage in either town.  They do have a couple of bulk drop-off each year. I'm not sure how adding the service would create a strain when it's the garbage company that would be collecting.


yahooyahoo said:

FilmCarp said:

I think our entire dpw department is about 18 people.  Adding this service would be a pretty big strain.   Anything they collect has to go into a dumpster and be paid for, as well.  I think soon other towns are going to stop what they are doing, which, frankly, they should.  What if we were responsible for paying for all of the trash we generate?  I think that is a good idea.  

The DPW doesn't collect garbage in either town.  They do have a couple of bulk drop-off each year. I'm not sure how adding the service would create a strain when it's the garbage company that would be collecting.

 The OP is asking why the town doesn't provide the service.  He can pay any private company for the service.  He does not want to pay for it.


FilmCarp said:

 The OP is asking why the town doesn't provide the service.  He can pay any private company for the service.  He does not want to pay for it.

 In South Orange, they don’t offer that option, as far as I know. 


FilmCarp said:

yahooyahoo said:

FilmCarp said:

I think our entire dpw department is about 18 people.  Adding this service would be a pretty big strain.   Anything they collect has to go into a dumpster and be paid for, as well.  I think soon other towns are going to stop what they are doing, which, frankly, they should.  What if we were responsible for paying for all of the trash we generate?  I think that is a good idea.  

The DPW doesn't collect garbage in either town.  They do have a couple of bulk drop-off each year. I'm not sure how adding the service would create a strain when it's the garbage company that would be collecting.

 The OP is asking why the town doesn't provide the service.  He can pay any private company for the service.  He does not want to pay for it.

Well, the OP said the town has (ONLY) six days to drop off bulk waste.  That seems like enough opportunities to get rid of that type of waste.  


MasterP said:

Any idea how it came about that Waste Industries and WM started offering that? Honestly, that's the minimum I'd want. The ability to set out one or two items a month to get taken away. We have like broken chairs and tables cluttering our garage, or even just a big broken toy, that doesn't easily fit into a garbage can or bag and is just a huge hassle to get rid of. 

Maplewood resident here - I don't know for sure, but I suspect it may be an outgrowth of having two companies competing for our service.  I think that one of them may have started to offer it as an option and the other had to also offer it to compete.  OR, the town may have included it as a requirement in the process for the companies to be eligible to offer their services here.  As far as I know that doesn't/wouldn't cost the town anything, although it might result in an increase in rates, especially if we didn't have the competition.  But SO could certainly consider it.  meanwhile, my SO friends occasionally ask me if they can put an item on my curb and I usually am able to let them, since I do not take advantage of it every time.



In order to add a comment – you must Join this community – Click here to do so.

Sponsored Business

Find Business

Advertise here!