In 2024, Waste Management collected from Auburn city streets 7,577 tons of garbage, 87 roadside litter bags, 80 tires and 74.31 tons of bulky items, 205 pounds of “sharps” and 74,180 pounds of garbage.

And that’s not everything.

Remember Nov. 19-20, when the “bomb cyclone” hit the Puget Sound region, causing power outages and toppling all those trees? King County stepped in and waived yard waste fees at transfer stations to self-haulers to help customers recover.

At the Auburn City Council study session on May 12, Laura Moser, WM’s Public Sector Manager, Joan Nelson, the city’s utilities billing services manager, and Jason Shea, WM’s South Sound district manager, presented WM’s 24th annual report.

Selected highlights of 2024

• Between Jan. 8-12, WM’s South Sound Operations Team hauled away natural Christmas trees from Auburn homes and apartment complexes. Moser noted that WM has seen a decrease in tonnage, as customers increasingly turn to artificial trees.

• Ratified a contract with Teamsters Local 174, the union that represents its drivers, thus securing a work force without disruptions for five years. “We never want disruptions,” Moser said.

• As King County announced it would do at the start of 2024, it closed the Algona Transfer Station to modify its equipment. This process continued on and off throughout the year, adding a lot of miles for its drivers.

• In November, Ardagh, the major glass bottle manufacturer in Seattle and primary user of glass from curbside recycling programs in Puget Sound and across the state, permanently closed its Seattle facility. Today, WM continues to deliver all collected curbside glass to Sibelco Glass Recycling, doing business as Strategic Materials Inc. (“SMI”) in Seattle for processing. SMI is also developing new customers and diversifying its end markets to recycle glass.

• Litter crews worked up through January 2025 but under a separate company.

Waste stream summary

Changes in 2024 showed customers were doing less residential recycling than they’d done in 2023, but overall, yard waste, or compost, or yard waste plus food waste, increased. Numbers given in tons:

• Residential: 12,791

• Multifamily 7,495

• Commercial: 27,397

“But when you look at the overall tonnage of everything,” Moser said, “while 2024 was down from 2023, our residential numbers were up. Multi-family was down and commercial was down.”

Councilmember Tracy Taylor asked about the decreases: “It’s really concerning to see the commercial numbers down, with the food and yard waste, especially considering that we do have a lot of food businesses here in Auburn … Is there a way that we can have an incentive program for that?”

Nelson said that the numbers referenced above apply only to WM’s customers. They don’t include the Safeway Distribution Center on the south end of town as it uses a different company to haul away its food waste, and Cedar Grove Composting works directly with businesses.

“So (the numbers are) higher than it looks like,” Nelson said.

Outreach to the community

Waste Management fields an outreach team that coordinates with Nelson and her staff every year. Last year, the team concentrated on 39 multi-family properties, which it visited twice to gin up public engagement. The first, in July, was to determine how much garbage was in the recycle bins, and the second was in August to determine what was in the garbage bins and then how much, so the company can work with the property manager to arrange for the right education for its customers.

“There definitely was an improvement, but as we all know, multi-family is something you gotta stay on top of all the time, with people moving in and out a lot. A lot of common contaminants (were found) in the recycle bags and plastic bags. We want everything to be loose, just throw it in there, no plastic bags,” Moser said.

Auburn no longer picks up polystyrene foam now that it has the grey recycle bins, but there’s a lot of it found yet in the recycle bins.

The hauler puts on two “Recycle Right” events each year, which collect some foam, electronics, paper or shredding and textiles at Ilalko Elementary and Rainier Middle School. Already this year, there was an event at Rainier Middle School in May, but another is coming up on July 26 at Pioneer Elementary. Waste Management also has its recycling All-Star Program drawings, where it gives away pizza at parties, and gives free service to five residents each year.

Recycling by the numbers

People in the hauling business talk about “diversion rates,” which is the percentage of total collected material that is not taken to a landfill, but is taken to a recycling or composting facility for processing, recycling, composting, reuse and repurposing.

In 2024, Auburn’s residential and commercial diversion was 45.8%, whereas it was 21.7% for apartment complexes.

WM’s and Recycle Corps interns also hosted educational booths at key community events, stocking them with waste guides for recycle, garbage and food and yard waste guides, hazardous waste information, activity sheets for kids, an interactive waste sorting game, and WM’s “Spinning Wheel of Waste.”