Pasco and Franklin County are preparing for the biggest changes to residential garbage service in years, including a new curbside organics program and the possibility of curbside recycling carts at homes that today have only drop boxes.
The Tri-City Herald, in a story by reporter Nicol León Arge, reported that the city and county are planning changes to how residents handle garbage, recycling and food waste over the next several years, including a new curbside organics program.
The changes are being driven by two state laws and a long-running rewrite of Franklin County's Solid Waste Management Plan. What residents will pay for the new services has not been settled.
What Pasco has now
Pasco households currently get weekly cart garbage collection from Basin Disposal. In an October 2025 briefing to the City Council, company representative Francik told council members that customers may set out unlimited extra bags, bundles and boxes next to a 96-gallon cart each week, that a second 96-gallon cart would cost $2.66 per month in 2026, and that the city's contract includes a 90% CPI pass-through clause for annual adjustments, with formal rate cases every three to five years, according to a meeting summary published by Citizen Portal.
There is no city-run curbside recycling. Recycling in the Pasco area is handled through neighborhood drop-off centers, with more than 14 locations in the region taking aluminum and steel cans, newspaper, office paper and cardboard, per Franklin County.
That rate structure matters, because new services could eventually show up either as separate line items or inside a future rate case.
The state mandates
The 2022 organics law, E2SHB 1799, requires that beginning Jan. 1, 2027, each county or city implementing a local solid waste plan provide source-separated organic waste collection at least every other week, or 26 weeks a year, to residents and to nonresidential customers generating at least a quarter cubic yard per week. Jurisdictions must also arrange for management of what they collect, and may charge fees or rates for the service.
Later legislation says local plans updated after July 1, 2024, must consider the 2027 transition to organics collection, and allows the Department of Ecology to adopt a rule beginning Jan. 1, 2030 extending the requirements to jurisdictions initially exempted on population-density or waiver grounds, according to the House bill report on E2SHB 2301. Beginning Jan. 1, 2028, certain jurisdictions must offer organics containers smaller than 101 gallons in curbside, multifamily, commercial and institutional settings, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance notes.
The second driver is the Recycling Reform Act, SB 5284, signed by Gov. Bob Ferguson in May 2025. Ferguson called it the "biggest overhaul of our recycling system in decades" at the signing, Waste Dive reported. The law creates a statewide recycling collection list and calls for extending curbside recycling to all homes that already have curbside trash service.
Under the program, now codified in Chapter 70A.208 RCW, a producer responsibility organization funded by packaging makers would reimburse most recycling collection costs starting in 2030. Ecology says residents who pay for curbside recycling should see their bills reduced in 2030. A public comment period on preliminary statewide collection lists ran Aug. 5-19, 2026.
Council's cost questions
City staff and consultants from Herrera briefed the Pasco council on the draft county plan at a Jan. 12 workshop, outlining regulatory deadlines, goals for harmonized recycling and organics programs and an uncertain funding picture. Council members questioned how the mandated services would be paid for. Consultants said some state grant money may be available to offset implementation costs, but that funding mechanisms and cost distribution were still being worked out, Apple Valley News Now reported. A summary of the same workshop was published by Citizen Portal.
What happens next
The draft Franklin County Solid Waste Management Plan has been in development for more than a year and has been in regulatory review. A state environmental filing describes the work as a non-project action to update the county's Solid Waste and Hazardous Waste Management Plan for 2026 to 2031. State law requires counties to review their plans every five years.
Residents can follow the process through the county's Solid Waste Advisory Committee, which holds quarterly public meetings on the third Wednesday of a quarter month at 1110 Osprey Pointe in Pasco. The county's solid waste office can be reached at 509-545-3551, and the Basin Disposal transfer station is at 1721 Dietrich Road.
Still unresolved: whether Pasco adds recycling carts and on what timeline, what organics collection will cost a typical household, and where collected food waste would be processed.
