Savannah dumps Waste Management for Waste Connection

June 10– Come Aug. 15 in Savannah, green is out and blue is in.

That’s the date Waste Connection’s blue residential garbage bins are due to replace the green ones used by Waste Management.

Waste Management has been collecting the trash from Savannah households and businesses since 1999.

But today, the Savannah City Commission unanimously awarded a five-year contract to Waste Connection Inc., whose bid of $57,411 per month came in nearly 18 percent lower than Waste Management’s $69,759.

The competition was tight, with a third bidder, Solid Waste Pickup Service, missing out on the contract by only about $500.

"We were elated to see the bid prices that we saw," said Savannah City Manager Garry Welch.

Not only will residential customers’ monthly bill remain unchanged at $13 as it has for more than a decade, but commercial customers can expect a reduction of around 5.5 percent, he said.

Under the contract soon to expire, Waste Management’s previous monthly charge to the city was approximately $62,000.

Marty Dunkin, division vice president for Waste Connections, said pickup dates will stay the same and Savannah customers "really shouldn’t see anything different except for new cans" coming straight from the factory.

California-based Waste Connections is an integrated solid waste services company that provides solid waste collection, transfer, disposal and recycling services in mostly secondary markets in the western and southern U.S. The company serves more than two million residential, commercial and industrial customers from a network of operations in 26 states, according to its website.