The average homeowner could pay about $53 monthly for trash, recycling and green waste pickup, starting with the next fiscal year.

The city of San Diego has finished collecting public feedback on trash, and if its proposal for fees and service schedule is approved by the full City Council next month, most homeowners will begin paying around $53 per month for collection services. 

The city currently provides collection services – mostly paid for by the general fund – for single-family homeowners and residential complexes up to four units, as it has done since 1919 and the implementation of the People’s Ordinance.

Currently, the city services about 250,000 customers with weekly trash and organics collection and bi-weekly recycling collection, San Diego Environmental Services Department interim Director Kirby Brady said, speaking to the City Council’s Environment Committee meeting Feb 13. 

Residences on private streets and in gated communities, mixed-use properties and non-residential properties have always been charged for collection services.

For the current fiscal year, the Environmental Services Department’s expenditures from the general fund for trash collections is about $71 million per year plus another $11 million from the recycling fund. 

“Additionally, there are some other expenses that have not been fully captured in the past,” said Jeremy Bauer, assistant director of ESD.

In 2022, San Diego voters passed Measure B, which amended the People’s Ordinance to allow the city to begin charging for waste collection.

After a lengthy process to ask San Diegans what services they would want included in a collection fee, the Environmental Services Department incorporated feedback into its research to formulate its proposal.

The fees

Fees for service would begin July 1 with the new fiscal year, and would be based on bundles of trash, recycling and organic waste containers of varying sizes.

The standard fee would be for three 95-gallon containers for the three pickups, and would cost about $53 the first year of the program, increasing by a few dollars each year as services are added to $66 beginning in July 2029.

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Discounts would be available for customers who choose smaller containers, incentivizing them to produce less trash, Bauer said. 

Add-on containers would also be available for an extra fee. 

The services

In addition to weekly pickup of trash and organic waste, the city would increase from bi-weekly to weekly recycling pickup starting July 1, 2027.

Missed collections will be made up the same day or the next day “at the latest,” Bauer said.

The proposal also comes with a new container approach, in which the customer chooses the size and quantity of trash container that works for their household, using a mobile app or website to select and manage containers. 

The new plan would also repeal the former charge to customers for replacement of broken containers. 

An operational efficiency analysis revealed that the useful life of trash containers is 10 years while the average age is 20 years old, Bauer said, so ESD will begin rolling out new trash and recycling containers in January.

The trash containers will come in a new gray color instead of the current black, he said, and all containers will have RFID readers for better tracking.

Customer feedback indicated widespread desire for curbside bulky item pickup; the city will begin that service twice a year on an appointment basis beginning in the third year of the program, concurrent with the increase in fees.

There will also be community waste drop-off events across council districts for medical waste, household hazardous waste and electronics waste beginning in Fiscal Year 2026.

These events – identified in resident surveys as a top preference – will “help to address an equity issue for those who either don’t have access to a vehicle or don’t live close to the Miramar landfill,” Bauer said. 

Fee justification and next steps

Other cities in San Diego County charge less for trash collection, from $27.53 in La Mesa to $41.88 in Imperial Beach, according to information ESD provided to the Environment Committee, but those cities differ in size and other attributes, Bauer said.

Other large, metropolitan areas in California charge a varied range from $41.32 in Los Angeles to $121.93 in San Francisco. 

The proposed San Diego rates are “higher than what my office estimated they would be two and a half years ago,” said independent budget analyst Charles Modica. 

The main driver of the increase is a change in the estimate to ESD’s customer base from an original 285,000 to 250,000 households, meaning the costs will be spread “among a smaller pool of customers,” he said.

Other reasons: Increased costs associated with new or expanded service levels and impacts of inflation.

Modica’s office is preparing a more thorough evaluation of the proposed rates for the City Council to review in March, he said. 

The city attorney’s office is also performing a legal assessment of the proposal.

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