Worthington will keep sending its recyclables to Rumpke. City Council voted to award the recycling-processing contract to Rumpke, the only company that bid, in a deal that holds the city's net recycling cost close to what it pays now and runs from 2027 onward. The vote settles one piece of the city's waste system, but a bigger decision is still ahead this year, when the city rebids its overall waste collection and weighs whether to add curbside food-waste pickup.
What the contract actually covers
The contract is for processing recyclables, not collecting them, a distinction Director and City Engineer John Moorehead called out for council. Rumpke hauls trash and runs landfills, but this agreement is specifically for sorting the recyclable material picked up in Worthington. The city's waste hauler trucks that material to Rumpke's central-Ohio facility, where it is separated into its component parts and sold as commodity product.
The pricing works in two directions. Rumpke can charge the city up to $35 per ton to process the material and can pay the city a rebate of up to $20 per ton for what it takes in. Every truck of Worthington recycling is weighed, and a formula tied to current market prices for the sorted material determines whether the city gets billed or gets a check. "We've gotten both," Moorehead told council.
Residents are not billed separately for any of this. The cost is paid directly by the city through its operating budget, staff confirmed.
Why only one company bid
The city put the work out to bid and heard back from a single company. Moorehead said that was not surprising: Rumpke already operates a sorting facility in central Ohio, while the nearest comparable processor is in Cleveland and would have to truck the material there to make the economics work. That competitor declined to bid.
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Costs are holding steady
The fees Rumpke charges to sort material, along with the residual fees it incurs to dispose of non-recyclable items that end up in the stream, have risen over the years. But the maximum $35-per-ton charge and the rebate have stayed the same, which Moorehead attributed to growth in the commodity market for the finished material. The result, he said, is that the city's net cost under the new contract should be similar to what it has paid under the 2022 contract, which expires at the end of this year.
A council member noted that the central-Ohio facility is family-owned and open for public tours.
The bigger decision still ahead
This contract is separate from a larger question council will take up later this year. The city plans to seek bids this year on its overall waste collection, which covers recycling, yard waste, and potentially food waste. That process will identify where collected recycling gets taken, which is why finalizing the Rumpke processing agreement now matters. Moorehead said a separate track could bring on a carrier for curbside food-waste collection, an option the city is weighing as part of that bid through a possible citywide composting program. The city's current trash, recycling, and yard-waste collection contract expires at the end of 2026, so any new service would begin with the next contract on January 1, 2027. Council expects the bids back in the fall and will decide then whether to add curbside composting.