国产麻豆

From promoting and supporting public art on their trucks and implementing a variable cart program to reduce contamination and injuries, to an effective management style of placing priority on employees working together as a team, the City of Cedar Rapids Solid Waste and Recycling Division focuses on being good stewards of their organization and community through innovative and effective programs.

Known as 鈥淭he City of Five Seasons庐鈥�, Cedar Rapids, IA was founded in 1849 and lies along the banks of the Cedar River. As an economic hub of Eastern Iowa, Cedar Rapids鈥� Solid Waste and Recycling Division prides itself on implementing innovative programs that benefit both the organization and the public they serve.

With 50 employees that service 44,000 residential households weekly, the Division runs 12 garbage routes, nine to 10 recycling routes, and one to six yard waste routes weekly, with the last two changing seasonally. The City of Cedar Rapids services residential household units of four or fewer for garbage, recycling, and yard waste collections. They currently partner with a recycling processor that is operated privately by Republic Services and their landfill is managed by the public entity, Cedar Rapids Linn County Solid Waste Agency.

Industry Impacts
While during COVID, the Division initially experienced impacted curbside collections with a significant increase in tonnages collected, post-COVID saw significant decreases in curbside tonnages as inflation spiked and unemployment benefits waned. To stay ahead of the curve the Division moved towards implementing Routeware鈥檚 route management and camera software in and on their trucks in June 2023. 鈥淭he system has helped us reduce fuel consumption by 10,000 gallons in the first year because it optimized routes, aided in reducing unnecessary missed collections and mitigate claims against the city for damages not caused by our trucks. We were able to view each incident with the cameras on the outside of the trucks and see what happened,鈥� explains Patricia Hall, Solid Waste and Recycling Manager.

She points out that the Division recently has not had issues keeping or maintaining staffing numbers. 鈥淲e are lucky to be a union facility with competitive pay, great benefits, and the work-life balance most desire.鈥� A lot of this has to do with her management style. Hall says that when she first entered the position, they had a high turnover rate. The previous manager had been in the position for more than 25 years and had a completely different way of working with employees. So, Hall made it her mission to transition to a new set of guiding principles for an updated management style, which involved listening to staff, giving them a voice, and placing priority on working together as a team. Integrating this kind of support into daily life helped to turn the Division around. 鈥淚 called it The Champion of Culture of Commitment. It is like an upside-down pyramid where the manager is at the bottom supporting frontline and other staff. It gives people more of a voice; they get ideas and support from each other,鈥� says Hall (see Guiding Principles sidebar).

Patricia Hall: Guiding Principles

In 2022, I took the position of Solid Waste and Recycling Manager for the City of Cedar Rapids, replacing a manager who was retiring after 26 years. The division, historically, faced issues with employee retention, poor morale, and a sense of resentment and anger towards management and supervisors. I knew I had my work cut out for me, but I was willing to take on the challenge. The first thing I did was work to build trust by listening. My first few days I rode along with staff and asked a lot of questions. I got a sense of the undertones in the division and worked on finding solutions to change the sentiment in the division. The first 6 months were challenging, to say the least, but at the one-year mark, we had actual documented success. How did we go from a place where no one wanted to work and low employee retention to a place where people wanted to work and high employee retention?

The Rule of Thirds
Recognize that your employees can be divided into three groups by the rule of thirds. Your top group is your high-level performers. This group works hard, are consistent performers, and continuously go above and beyond. Your middle-level group is your average performer. They come to work, perform the tasks assigned, and occasionally go above and beyond. They have mostly consistent attendance and mostly consistent work performance. Then you have your bottom group. This is your low-level work performance group. They have poor attendance, poor attitudes, inconsistent work performance, and are your biggest frustration. Recognizing these groups is vital to changing your culture. You will never get 100 percent of your employees to be solely in any one of the thirds, but the goal is to have a 20/70/10 group. The 20/70/10 is 20 percent high-level performers, 70 percent middle-level performers, and 10 percent low-level performers. Getting most of your employees to the middle group provides the best results that you can rely on. How do you reach this goal? Prioritize the average and high-performing groups. Usually, our time and energy are focused on the low-performance group. This makes logical sense since we seem to always be dealing with personnel and performance issues with this group. This can make the low-performance group even larger. Frustration and poor attitudes from the low performers spill over into the middle and high-performance group, thus increasing our low-level group. Prioritize the middle and high performers. Recognition and praise go a long way. When the borderline average and low performers see the focus on the middle and top, they instinctively want to move up. When focus is taken away from the low performers, their influence over the entire group diminishes.

Promote and Support Ideas from Within
Employees are the biggest asset and some of the best and most innovative problem solvers. Giving them the microphone benefits not only employee morale, but also company efficiency. Who do you think may have the best idea of how a route is run, or how a piece of equipment operates? Probably the person running it every day. Allow constructive feedback and ask the question, how can we do better?

Turn Your Pyramid Upside Down
We have all seen the typical organizational pyramid. Management at the top, front-line staff at the bottom with some supervisors sprinkled in the middle. What happens when you turn that pyramid upside down? As management and supervisors, it is important to recognize we wouldn鈥檛 be where we are without our front-line staff.

Ask The Right Questions
This seems easy, right? Asking questions is our job as management, but are we asking the right questions? How can we be better as managers if we don鈥檛 know how things are really going? Maybe surface level everything seems fine and operations seem smooth, but what are the undertones? Ask the right questions. Be inclusive and allow the tough conversations. We are human, we are not perfect.

Rolling Art
The Division has also been unique in implementing 鈥渞olling public art鈥�. Hall is a big supporter of public art. Before coming to the City of Cedar Rapids, she was with the City of Iowa City and was an integral part of getting a mural on the side of their administration building to promote and support public art. She says Iowa City鈥檚 administration building also housed The Bike Library, a nonprofit next door to them that took in donated bikes, fixed them up, and sold them. They would also provide bikes, helmets, and lessons to lower income children. The 160-foot-long mural was used to attract and draw people to the area in order to give them some added business. 鈥淲hen I came here to the city of Cedar Rapids, the building was not conducive to the same situation, so in 2023 I floated the idea of using the trucks as giant rolling billboards for art. We ended up having conversations with our art commission and our sustainability coordinator who both really liked the idea, so we put out an RFP in December 2023 to artists nationwide; however, in January 2024, we ended up selecting five of our local artists since we were looking for something that promoted the city and sustainability, and they had a better concept of what was going on locally.鈥�

Hall explains that the Division obtained quotes from local graphics companies for the wraps, so once the designs were selected and voted on by the art commission, they could have one lined up when ready. 鈥淲e received the file from the selected artist and the graphics company printed them. Then, we worked with scheduling the trucks to go to their facility to get wrapped. We would stagger them to go out one at a time, so it took about a week and then they were all ready to go.鈥� When the five wraps were applied on the trucks and rolled out to the public by the first week of March 2024, they received a lot of praise. 鈥淧eople were very excited to see the trucks come through their neighborhoods, and today, they are still excited for garbage and recycling day, and to see these colorful trucks coming down the street versus the plain ones,鈥� says Hall.

She says they received four new trucks in February 2025 and in March, the designs for this set of trucks will be chosen from the Eastern Iowa Arts Academy, which is a nonprofit that offers art classes to lower income children. 鈥淭his project has brought color and personality to our typically mundane white garbage and recycling trucks and the Division plans to continue implementing wraps on all new fleet vehicles.鈥�

Cart Program
Next year, the Division will begin implementing a variable cart size program to reduce work injuries and contamination in their diversion programs. Currently, the city offers only a 35-gallon cart for garbage. Residents can purchase additional garbage carts for a higher fee, or purchase tags for extra bags at local stores. Hall points out that the extra bags with tags have contributed to significant work injuries and higher contamination in their diversion programs, especially with regards to back, neck, and shoulder strains. 鈥淚 looked at some of our numbers from work injuries and we had 21 injuries over five years, which was almost $400,000 in work comp costs, so we started brainstorming how do we reduce these injuries? The number one thing that came up was to give the residents a bigger container and stop allowing the bags. Another one of the things that we had seen is that our contamination rates are very high in some areas, and we think it鈥檚 mostly due to a financial barrier in purchasing extra tags.鈥�

The city liked the idea of the bigger containers, but had to figure out the revenue source, so the Division laid out all of the details in their budget for the next fiscal year, which starts in July 2025. As a result, the transition will most likely roll out in the fall of 2026. 鈥淲e hope to mitigate both issues鈥攃ontamination and injuries鈥攂y offering larger-size carts for additional fees to our residents and eliminating our extra tag for bags program,鈥� stresses Hall.

Operations
Currently, Hall is on the subcommittee for ISOSWO, the Iowa Chapter of SWANA, serving local municipalities. They are all currently working together on not only developing a training program that has more consistency across the state, but also how to remain within OSHA regulations, including proper paperwork, exiting and entering vehicles correctly, dangers on the job, etc. Within the Division, Hall emphasizes that they try to mitigate these issues as soon as somebody joins the staff, and they also reinforce good safety habits with current employees. 鈥淎s soon as new people come on board, they get the safety training they need with ongoing checks. We also have daily morning meetings that include discussions around what is happening at that point in time. For example, in the summer we talk about heat exhaustion, staying hydrated, taking breaks, and in the wintertime, we talk more about slips, trips, and falls, wearing appropriate footwear because here, in a northern climate, we get a lot of snow and ice. We also make sure that everybody understands how to put chains on the trucks.鈥�

All of this is part of onboarding training as well; however, the Division is in the process of developing a more efficient training process. Hall says that previously, a new employee would go through safety paperwork, go out on the truck with an experienced driver, and then were on their own. 鈥淣ow, on their first day after the paperwork is complete, we take them out to the shop to go over the truck and where everything is located as well as getting an understanding of where things are in the cab鈥攖he joysticks, the buttons, the controls鈥攁nd then letting them get used to it. Next, we鈥檒l set up some cans so they can try to dump them with and without obstacles, as well as take the employee to the parking lot at an ice arena where we have set up a driving training course that puts them in some of the situations that they鈥檒l see in real life鈥攂acking down dead ends, navigating corners, parked cars, turning around in a cul-de-sac, etc. We try to set up what we know are some of the harder things that they鈥檙e going to come across when they go out, so they will have a little bit more of an understanding and feel a little bit more comfortable with the truck. All of our employees that start here have CDLs but driving a garbage truck is completely different than driving a regular truck, box truck, or a semi. They have to pass the course with no mistakes and the supervisors must feel comfortable with their progress before they are able to go and get that real world experience,鈥� explains Hall.

Reaching Out
As a Division, they do take part in various events in the city, such as the annual Earth Day event and resident appreciation day at the farmers market on the first Saturday in June. The city also holds an open house in the fall and allows the public to come into their facilities, so they can see all of the the trucks and buses. In addition, if they are contacted by a group or organization for a tour or to give an educational talk, they will make arrangements to accommodate the request.

When the newly wrapped trucks were debuting in 2024, they not only sent out a press release and took part in a local news story about it, the Division also participated in a few events promoting the trucks, including one for Earth Day and a SWANA Road-E-O event. 鈥淎t that event, we offered the artists to come out and get their picture with their truck鈥檚 design. Then, at the summer farmers鈥� market for city appreciation day, we brought one of the wrapped trucks out to display. Anytime we participate in a local event, we select one of the trucks to go out and if schools ask us to come out and do a demonstration, we鈥檒l take one of those trucks for the kids,鈥� says Hall.

Efficiency Driven
One of the goals of the Division is to reduce fuel consumption and miles driven, and Hall is proud that they have achieved saving 10,000 gallons of fuel in fiscal year 2024 compared to fiscal year 2023. They currently do this by 鈥渇lexing鈥� routes up and down by seasonal demand. Being a northern latitude city, they have large decreases in program participation during the primary winter months of December, January, and February, and, as a result, have moved to a call-in only yard waste program during historically low participation.

The Division also facilitates many different avenues for litter collection in the city. They partner with a nonprofit, Willis Dady, which runs the local homeless shelter to employ people. In fall 2024, they also started a contract with the Iowa Prison Industries to provide litter collection on the interstate and throughout the city; staff also performs litter collection as well. 鈥淲e also have what鈥檚 called the City Manager One Bag Challenge, where residents can pick up mint green bags and litter kits at the local stores, so they can go out and collect trash around their neighborhood. They can set it next to their garbage container on collection day and we鈥檒l pick it up at no charge,鈥� says Hall. 鈥淟ast year we collected a record 9,089 bags of litter. The Solid Waste and Recycling Division collected 5,712 bags, the local non-profit and homeless shelter Willis Dady we contract with collected 2,225 bags, local residents collected 698 bags, and our Adopt-a-Road volunteers collected 447 bags. The remaining four bags were collected by the Department of Corrections court-ordered community service.鈥�
Coming up, Hall says they will complete the new wraps for their four new trucks from the Eastern Iowa Arts Academy, as well as take the next big step in getting their variable cart program rolled out. 鈥淥ur #1 goal currently is efficiency. We want to be good stewards of our community and reduce inefficiencies in the Division.鈥� | WA

For more information, contact Patricia Hall at (319) 286-5897 or e-mail [email protected].