Mahoning County looking to replace recycling bins with wheeled carts

YOUNGSTOWN

Mahoning County officials are considering making a radical change in their recycling program.

The 18-gallon, open-topped buckets county residents have been using since the curbside recycling program’s inception more than two decades ago would be replaced with 96-gallon wheeled carts with lids.

The carts would automatically be hoisted and dumped into collection trucks, whose drivers would no longer exit the trucks to manually lift and empty buckets.

The county would buy 47,575 of the carts for $3.1 million, amounting to about $65 per cart.

The county would borrow the money to pay for the carts, and the loan would be paid off from savings achieved by closing some of the county’s recycling drop-off centers.

Read more about the plan in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.