Single Family Weight Study

With nearly 14 years of existence, the Single Family Weight Study has been one of Community Environmental Services' (CES) long-standing projects. The Weight Study is currently contracted through the City of Portland’s Office of Sustainable Development. The purpose of the study is the collection of data on the weight of residential garbage set-outs.

This needs to be done because:

In the City of Portland the residential garbage collection system has been regionally franchised to different collection companies. Due to this if you live in a residential neighborhood, you will only have one option of which company will haul your garbage. This type of arrangement between the City of Portland and its local hauling companies is a progressive way to keep down pollution, noise and wasted time. Instead of a complete free-for-all in residential neighborhoods with garbage trucks from several companies competing for customers, we now have a unified system with only one truck needing to service each neighborhood. This reduces the gasoline the trucks use, the noise they generate and the wasted time of drivers servicing scattered households.

However, one problem arises. With only one company to choose from for garbage service, the market looses its edge due to loss of competition in the franchised region. That is where the City of Portland steps in and regulates the proper price for garbage service throughout the city. In order to calculate the rates by which the city determines to be fair to both the garbage haulers and the residents they are in need of some raw data on the average weight of residential garbage, and of the costs associated with its disposal. CES is the organization responsible with collecting the data on the average weight of residential garbage.

Each year the Single Family Weight Study Team collects data on the weight of close to10,000 garbage containers scattered throughout Portland’s residential neighborhoods. The study is currently being coordinated by CES’s Field Services Coordinator, Thomas Egleston, and Field Research Assistant, Ryan Trif. They have been working together on this project for close to a year now, and are looking forward to the next year's study!