Sanitary with Brandt

The announcement, which was made at the Independence City Council last week, accompanied notification of a 7.8 % rate increase this May, with an additional recycling surcharge of $1.90 per container. The request for the fee hike sailed through the council vote.

It was the first billing increase for the company since 2016. In a trend seen across the nation, expenses for waste removal and processing have shot up like the price of eggs, gas and interest rates from the Federal Reserve.

“I feel this is the only way and the best way to keep our community being taken care of like the way you have always done,” said City Councilor Dawn Roden, as Brandt awaited the decision by the council.

“I am very grateful for the service that is offered by Brandt’s,” said Councilor Marilyn Morton, before moving to adopt the resolution, which passed unanimously.

Now there are big empty bins in the bay area at Brandt’s Sanitation Service awaiting what the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality calls the “the monster in your closet,” those lurking out-of-date leftover keyboards and cell phones. The estimated time to launch is sometime this spring, Brandt said.

Many electronic devices contain lead and mercury that, when collected by Brandt’s and similar companies, keep these harmful materials “out of our air, soil and water” instead of being buried in a back yard, according to the DEQ.

The regulatory red tape for this “e-recycling” took about a year’s time to tackle, Brandt said.

“This will be good for people here,” Brandt predicted.

He has had a long up-close and personal view of the company’s consumer base in Independence and Monmouth – helping out at the facility since he was a kid. An alum of Central High School, Brandt lives in the area and his three children who go to public schools in Independence and Monmouth.

Brandt came back to his hometown after graduating with a business degree from Concordia University.

With the ink barely dry on his college diploma, Brandt created the wine bar “Crush” in Monmouth in 2009, which he sold after he joined the sanitary service seven years ago.

From the company’s “hub” on Highway 99 in Monmouth near the intersection of Main Street, Brandt reflected on the evolving challenges facing the business – a stark contrast to the time when his great-grandparents founded a service that was then called “trash collecting.”

Since then, there’s been significant population growth. The census count for Independence passed 10,000 this year; Monmouth’s numbers shot up to more than 11,000 – a difference that’s close to 10% compared with only a few years ago. However, it isn’t only the uptick in customers that has meant such a change, Brandt noted.

This coincides with the period in which China decided to stop taking American plastic-waste products, leading some companies into a frantic scramble to find places for their deposits, a situation that has persisted. So far Brandt’s hasn’t had a problem locating landfills, but expenses – and demand for services – keep ticking up.

The U.S. has achieved the disappointing rank of highest waste-generating nation per person of any country. Over the course of a lifetime, “the average American will discard nearly 800 times the amount of his or her adult weight,” according to the National Waste and Recycling Association.

The pressure to keep pace makes safety precautions a key part of the profession, according to association spokesman Brandon Wright, who noted that most sanitation companies hold an annual “safety day” as a reminder to spend time evaluating their risk-prevention procedures.

This past December, the U.S. Bureau of Labor issued statistics showing that “material-moving” occupations are among the most dangerous in terms of both worker injuries and deaths. These fatalities largely stem from accidents in trucks, which in some cases relate to the hydraulic forces often used on these vehicles, confirmed Andrea Lazo, director of marketing and digital communications for the Solid Waste Association of North America.

Brandt’s grandfather, Darrell, who still owns the business, has entrusted his grandson to help usher it into the future, and that’s just what the younger Brandt would like to do. In fact, he plans to be involved until he is well into his 60s.

“I want to see us reach that 100-year mark,” he said, which is only three decades away. The century milestone seems like a worthy goal for his work life, he added.

Asked if he minded that most people still see the business as garbage retrieval, Brandt pointed out that recycling probably only translates to 25% of the company’s business, and maybe an even lower percentage than that. So solid waste and yard debris does comprise the bulk of the operation, a form of waste disposal that accounts for about three-fourths of Brandt’s business and adds up to approximately 12,000 tons of annually, he said.

“I don’t care if people call it garbage,” Brandt said. “I am proud of what we do. Calling it garbage is okay with me.”

(Trammart News Service, of Trammart Inc., is solely responsible for the style and content of news accounts it provides.)