NEW SCOTLAND — Less competition, financial experts often say, is typically bad for consumers — one caveat to that economic axiom has been Capital Region waste-and-recycling customers. 

In March, internationally-owned but locally-operated Robert Wright Disposal began offering a year of free pick-up to customers in Altamont. And now, the hauler has done away with the annual fee — $55,000 — the town of New Scotland was charged to recycle residents’ discarded items. So far this year, the town has paid approximately $24,000 in recycling tipping fees. 

“As I understand it, because of the change in the marketplace and some of the players — we’re still using Robert Wright Disposal Inc. — Robert Wright has indicated that they are able to eliminate the tipping fee cost for New Scotland,” said New Scotland town attorney Michael Naughton during a special town board meeting on June 18. “And I think it’s probably a sign of good faith, we worked with them when the marketplace required some adjustments to the contract.”

In August 2020, Wright was bought by Waste Connections, the third-largest waste-services company in North America. Waste Connections also owns County Waste’s Sierra Processing plant in Albany, the only material-recovery facility in the Capital Region, which allows Wright to dispose of recyclables at a parent company-owned facility. 

Unless the town cancels the contract, the tipping fees will be eliminated until the end of the agreement, in 2024, Naughton said.

Wright came to the board in June 2018, asking that the contract signed in May 2016 be amended because the cost of recycling had gone from $10 to $40 per ton. Wright estimated at the time that the $30-per-ton increase cost him approximately $24,000 a year. 

The town board board approved an increase of $15,685 to the original agreement. 

In September 2018, with China no longer taking the world’s trash, recycling costs spiked to $120 per ton, but by November of that year had dropped back down to $80 per ton. And Wright was again before the board in November 2018 seeking an additional $20 per ton, which the board granted.

In June 2019, the town took back the single-stream recycling tipping fees from Wright because it could get a better deal through the Capital Region Solid Waste Management Group.

Wright’s remaining contract with the town to pick up residents’ waste and recycling cost New Scotland about $304,000 this year. It costs the town another $169,000 in waste tipping fees at Rapp Road.