The Seattle City Council trashed plans to build a new garbage transfer station in Georgetown.

On July 16, the council passed a "zero waste" strategy introduced by Councilman Richard Conlin that calls for the city to increase its total recycling to 72 percent by 2025.

The resolution calls for a number of components, including recycling of organic materials such as food scraps, eventually eliminating self-haul trips to the dump and rebuilding the city's two existing garbage transfer stations.

The north and south recycling and disposal stations will need to be almost completely rebuilt in order to handle the volume of waste and recycled materials expected to pass through them. According to Marty McOmber, spokesman for Mayor Greg Nickels, these stations are upward of 40 years old and do not have proper facilities for sorting recycling.

"They're literally falling apart," said Andy Ryan, spokesman for Seattle Public Utilities. "They close frequently and they don't provide the city the kind of reliability we're going to need."

Ryan said that while there is not yet a set timeframe for reconfiguring the stations, construction will likely take place within the next three years. There are no estimated costs for updating the garbage transfer stations.

"Immediately we save $50 million that would otherwise have been spent on construction (on the Georgetown transfer station)," said Conlin. "And the main benefit from the system standpoint is that we're not devoting our resources to better ways to get trash to the landfill."

The text of the resolution also called for the city to reduce its municipal solid waste disposal by 1 percent per year for the next five years. It also calls for the city to meet its goal of recycling 60 percent of materials used by 2012.

One plan contributing to increased recycling rates is an organics program, which will be implemented on April 1, 2009. This program calls for all single-family homes to collect and recycle food waste. Although the program will only be mandatory for single-family homes, the plan calls for voluntary organics collection to be available to multi-family residences no later than April 2009.

The "zero waste" plan also calls for a reduction in construction and demolition waste by promoting salvage and reuse of building materials, which constitute a significant percentage of solid waste in the city. The city's Department of Planning and Development will work with Seattle Public Utilities to investigate a system of incentives and disincentives for developers and contractors to meet waste-reduction goals.

According to Conlin's office, many of the plan's programs will begin in April 2009, when the city signs a new garbage collection contract. These programs may increase the cost of garbage services in the short term.

"In 2008 the cost will be about $700,000," Conlin said. "But when you balance that against $50 million not being put into the transfer station, it looks pretty small. Our expectation is that, as we reduce the amount of waste that is being landfilled, we may very well break even in the long run."

Kat Lewin may be reached at katl@robinsonnews.com