Pazey Yang, a Minnesota GreenCorps member assigned to Hopkins, gave a presentation on how the program is going so far and provided additional information about organic education opportunities during a Jan. 18 Hopkins City Council meeting.
So far, 612 residencies have signed up for the program. The goal was to get 75 participants in the program by the time the program started on Jan. 1, she said.
“I just think that’s unbelievable that we have a 20% participation rate in a program that just started,” Councilmember Gerard Balan said. “And it just goes to show how much organics recycling is important to the Hopkins community and I’d just like to thank you for your work.”
Councilmember Alan Beck said he was originally excited that he and a few of his neighbors had signed up for the program, but was even more excited to see the program in use.
“I did get a little bit of negative feedback concerning how the cost was assigned, that everybody in the city was assigned the charge,” he said.
The city began the program to comply with Hennepin County’s requirement for all cities with over 10,000 residents to provide the opportunity to participate in the curbside collection of organic material by the first of the year.
Nate Stanley, the public works director, said the mandate applies to the entire community. In order to keep the cost low for the program, more than 2,000 customers in the community are being charged an additional $6 on their monthly utility bill regardless of being in the program or not.
“To the people commenting why everyone is getting charged for it, this is really the only way to make it economical, that we can afford to do this,” Beck said.
Councilmember Brian Hunke said they felt the idea of spreading the cost around to customers would encourage more people to participate in the program rather than only interested customers paying the program fee.
“We felt that there would be less people if there was that added cost just to the person who participates in the organic, and actually it might be more than $6 as well,” he said.
Yang has held education sessions about organics recycling at the Hopkins Activity Center for residents. The first session was on Dec. 9 of last year with more than 30 participants in attendance and the next was a senior luncheon on Jan. 13.
“Both events had residents asking great questions and I was met with a lot of eagerness, enthusiasm and excitement for the program,” she said.
An organics webinar was held on Jan. 24, which was recorded.
Yang said an organics bingo challenge is also going on until the end of February, with the goal of encouraging behavior change and helping residents transition into the program. Completed submissions will enter a random drawing and two winners will each receive three boxes of BPI bags. Information can be found on the city’s website.
