Beginning Jan. 1, tenants of St. Paul duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes will be allowed to share trash carts with fellow residents of the same building, cutting down on expenses.

For property owners who have long pined for the right to offer fewer carts, it’s a change to St. Paul’s residential garbage collection rules that has been more than seven years in coming. The city shifted to organized trash collection in 2018, immediately drawing complaints from landlords who said they likely would have to foist the cost of excess trash services onto their tenants, making housing even more expensive.

Property owners quickly rallied to show the city the unused trash carts sitting idle in their garages even as charges tripled or quadrupled overnight.

In December 2021, several landlords were appointed to the city’s two-year advisory task force on residential trash collection, with the goal of fine-tuning future contract requests. In 2024, the city contracted FCC Environmental for citywide garbage collection in one-to-four unit buildings, replacing a consortium that at one time had included Waste Management and 14 other trash haulers. FCC began collection across most of the city on April 1, with city employees servicing 10% of routes.

The new seven-year contract did not launch cart sharing from the get-go, but it kept the possibility open.

Council vote

On Wednesday, the city council voted 7-0 to allow eligible properties to share carts, provided they notify the city and comply with certain requirements.

Cart-sharing will be allowed for residents of the same building of two to four units, though property owners of buildings with at least five residential units can also opt in to residential coordinated collection and choose to share carts.

“This is very good news. Is it perfect? No, but it is very good news for multi-family (properties),” said Alisa Lein, who manages multiple Summit Hill-area properties where empty carts have piled in the basement, at a cost of several thousand dollars per year. “It’s the ethical, right thing to do. It should have been done from day one.”

“This will finally help the alleys be not so cluttered,” she added. “We don’t need all these carts.”

How it works

Properties that are adjacent to each other but have the same owner may request dumpster service from the city. Under the ordinance amendment, if the city’s designated service is unable to provide dumpster service, the property owner may contract with a private hauler with city approval.

Cart sharing comes with no additional fees, but it does carry some potential penalties. The first overflow trash bag within a two-month period will result in an educational tag. The second overflow trash bag within any two-month period will trigger a notice, and after the third overflow bag, a 64-gallon cart will be delivered and charged to the property owner.

A lot with a shared 64-gallon cart and three instances of overflow trash bags within a two-month period would have its cart-sharing privileges revoked, and 64-gallon carts will be delivered to each residential unit. A trash cart is considered “overflowing” if the lid is raised more than six inches, drawing concern from some residents who say they’ve been unfairly penalized without an appeals process allowing them the opportunity to show their cart lid was not that high.

In public comments shared with the city council, a representative of a homeowner’s association expressed disappointment the rule changes did not speak specifically to HOAs, which sometimes operate across buildings.

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