First, he had ABC, then Nauset, then Maher, then Heritage, followed by Star, Carney, and now Lombard’s.
Nicholas Shuster-Maloof has lived in Plymouth less than four years, but he’s already had seven companies pick up his trash, he said.
Sometimes he switched for poor service — or he inherited a new hauler when his company was sold to another one.
There are so many waste disposal companies doing business in Plymouth that several may service a single neighborhood. Or a company could have one customer on an entire street. It’s not unusual for traffic to back up while a procession of miscellaneous waste removal trucks makes stops on the same street.
And depending on the company, the service can be highly unreliable, especially in recent months.
“The trash barrels in our neighborhood are like rainbows — all different and all different colors,” said Shuster-Maloof, who lives in the White Horse Beach section of town.
For months, residents have been complaining about missed or late pickups or the fact that they’re no longer sure who is picking up their trash. Star Waste Systems in particular – with offices in Brockton and West Bridgewater – has been the subject of customers’ ire.
“Star Waste — what an absolute joke,” wrote a resident on All Things Plymouth Facebook page on Oct. 28. “They took over Heritage Waste almost a month ago and my trash hasn’t been picked up since.”
Another resident, Steve Dinsmoor, said his most recent trash company, Maher, was great, but it got bought out — also by Star.
It’s a symptom of a nationwide consolidation trend in the waste management industry that is leaving many residential customers feeling like they don’t matter to increasingly large haulers.
“It just keeps happening the little guys are getting eaten up by the bigger guys and they do not care about us,” Dinsmoor said in an email.
Before Maher, he had a contract with Win Waste which, after taking over from his previous company, Dooley, didn’t pick up his trash for weeks, according to Dinsmoor.
“I would come home to my trash all over the street due to critters getting into it,” he wrote.
“We canceled service with them because of this treatment and asked that they come get the trash that they missed and they told us, “Well, you just canceled so you’re on your own,’” he said.
Star did not respond to requests for comment.
Shuster-Maloof said he doesn’t understand how any of the companies make money — given that the town is so spread out and their business isn’t concentrated in one area.
“I was trying to reason the economics of it, and it can’t be profitable unless you own a neighborhood,” he said.
The cost of trash and recycling collection can vary but generally runs from $30 to $55 per month.
George Latini, operations manager for Lombard’s Waste, a locally owned company that generally receives good reviews, said consolidations run in cycles. He predicted that once the newer companies get used to the sprawling town’s geography the number of complaints will drop.
“In the next two months (they) will get their acts together and start providing weekly service,” he said. “They’ll have regular drivers who know the routes.
“And people who have had enough will find another company,” he said.
But there is a larger question: Why do residents have to deal with hiring a company to get rid of household trash and recyclables? Isn’t trash collection one of the essential services that communities are expected to provide residents?
Maybe, but not in Plymouth. Residents here seem resigned to the current system, which too often requires them to send emails and make phone calls to find out when – or if – someone will come to empty their plastic bins.
Plymouth is the largest town in Massachusetts, covering more than 100 square miles. And it’s the only one of the state’s 10 biggest that doesn’t offer curbside trash and recycling through its government, according to data from OpenGov, a technology company that provides online information for state and local governments.
Besides hiring private companies, Plymouth residents can bring their trash to the Manomet Transfer Station on Beaver Dam Road. A yearly permit costs $190.
With more than 65,000 residents, Plymouth’s population is larger than those of Brookline, Arlington, Billerica, Shrewsbury, Natick, Andover, Chelmsford, Lexington, and Dartmouth — all of which offer residents curbside trash collection, according to the OpenGov data.
And all similarly sized cities also offer curbside pickup.
Some communities, like Boston, use their own trucks and personnel to collect trash. Others contract with private haulers.
Residents may pay for the service through property taxes, or enterprise funds — or through a combination of town revenues and fees collected from residents. (They can be flat fees and fees per trash bag, or other receptacles.)
Some nearby towns do not offer curbside pickup, but they are considerably smaller – including Kingston, Carver, and West Bridgewater, according to town records.
Plymouth did have curbside collection for five years, but it was scrapped in 2018 after the contractor, ABC Disposal, wanted to raise prices, according to Select Board minutes at the time.
The town and residents shared the cost of the service. Residents paid a fee to the town – and had to buy special plastic trash bags. The town, in turn, paid ABC, according to Plymouth’s communications coordinator, Casey Kennedy.
It is not clear whether the Select Board considered hiring another contractor — to be paid by the town, residents using the service, or both.
Frustrated homeowners say that at the very least the town should make sure the waste removal companies are providing the service residents are paying for on their own. Bins can block sidewalks for days or even weeks. Sometimes trash from overloaded containers is carried by the wind, or animals get into it, causing a blight on the landscape.
The town’s health department oversees the private collection of trash and recyclables, but it has only received two complaints from residents, according to Kennedy.
Town regulations, issued in 2019, require that companies looking for a permit must provide proof of insurance, a list of vehicles that will be used, and a list of customers. But there are no regulations requiring trash companies to adhere to a particular schedule or to show up at set times, or to show up at all.
The town has the power to fine companies that violate any rules — for example, if they dump trash improperly. It could suspend or revoke a permit. But it has never taken action against any private trash hauler, according to Kennedy.
Town records include the names of the companies licensed to do business in Plymouth, along with the number of households they serve.
But the total number of households reflected in those figures is only 11,000 — less than half the actual number of about 25,000. Either the records are incomplete or people are disposing of trash in some other way — possibly by bringing it to a community that does offer curbside collection or disposing of it in public trash receptables.
Some residents wonder whether the town could seek bids for specific neighborhoods so that one hauler could provide service in those areas.
“The current situation, with different private haulers serving the same areas of town on different days means garbage trucks are essentially always everywhere,” said Select Board member Kevin Canty.
The trucks are both noisy and smelly, so minimizing the number of trips they make looping through neighborhoods would help.
“It’s far from ideal, particularly in the older parts of town with narrower roads — where these trucks, plus Amazon and various delivery trucks, cause constant traffic backups,” Canty said of the current operations.
The town, he said, should “investigate what solutions are within our power to implement to address this problem.”
Select Board member Dick Quintal, who has also heard the complaints of frustrated residents, wants to make sure the companies are delivering the service people are paying for.
“Everyone has the right to sell but if you’re charging people, you need to perform your duties,” he said. “If someone has a license, we can fine them or pull it.
“I’m not done with this by any means,” Quintal said.
Andrea Estes can be reached at andrea@plymouthindependent.org.