St. Louis is recycling more material at lower cost since it ended free alley recycling in August 2025, city data shows.
Mayor Cara Spencer outlined the change as a model for other cities at SWANA’s RCon 2026 conference.
“The harsh truth was that it wasn’t working very well,” she said of the shared blue alley dumpsters. “No one clapped, right? But the reality is it was necessary.”
Before the change, shared alley dumpsters served about 80% of St. Louis households. The other 20% use roll carts. In fiscal 2025, more than half of the recycling the city collected was rejected at Republic Services’ MRF, and recycling cost the city almost five times more per ton than trash, according to the city. St. Louis spent about $1.7 million on recycling disposal fees that year.
The city paused alley collection after a May 2025 tornado and formally ended it Aug. 14, 2025, moving those households to drop-off sites.
A six-month report the city released in March found contamination fell 83% from August 2025 through February 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, and the volume of material recycled rose 8%.
The share of collected material successfully recycled climbed from 37% to 78%, according to the city’s CityStat refuse dashboard. The drop-off network grew from 25 to 46 sites, putting one within a mile of every home.
“We are actually recycling more now with the drop-off site,” Spencer said.
She also said the change saves the city “hundreds of thousands of dollars in recycling tip fees.”
The new system saved more than $450,000 over its first six months, according to CityStat, and city operations chief Ben Jonsson indicated monthly savings at roughly $100,000.
From Oct. 16 to Nov. 15, 2025, the city recycled 319 tons and paid $79,661 in fees, compared with 373 tons and $186,080 over the same stretch in 2024, according to figures the city gave First Alert 4. The city recycled fewer tons in that time period, but paid less than half as much.
Contamination rose again in early 2026, and the share of tonnage successfully recycled slipped to about 75%, the city reported. That’s down from 78% over the program’s first six months but well above the 48% recycled under the alley system, when 52% of collected material was rejected. Officials are investigating the cause and running a pilot on the two routes with the highest contamination.
The drop-off model has drawn criticism over access.
Maxine Gill, policy coordinator at the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, said when the change was announced that residents would not go out of their way to use drop-off sites. Within months, residents were complaining about overflowing bins. The city responded by collecting the busiest sites three to four times a week.
A 13-member mayoral task force formed after the switch recommended in June that the city move to universal roll carts, the system about 20% of households already use. Each home would get one cart for trash and yard waste, collected on separate days, and could request a second cart for recycling at no extra cost.
Spencer said carts may not work for older residents or those with limited mobility. The task force is waiting on a roll cart feasibility study before issuing final, nonbinding recommendations later this year.
