View in browser

In this issue:

• HERC spring outage: March 24 to May 4, 2025
• MPCA reporting reminder
• Help keep contaminants out of the organics
• Insurance reminder for 2025-2026
• Visible truck number decals make everyone's job easier

HERC spring outage: March 24 to May 4, 2025

HERC is planning a maintenance outage beginning Sunday, March 24, 2025. The outage is scheduled for completion on Sunday, May 4, 2025. There will be several days during this time when both combustion units will be down. This will require us to limit the hours that we can accept waste. We will contact all haulers with the exact time frame of limited hours in a couple of weeks. Thank you in advance for your cooperation during the outage. If you have any questions, contact the hauler hotline, 612-348-7813, or haulers@hennepin.us.

MPCA reporting reminder

State statute requires waste haulers to submit regular reports to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).

The information must include trash, recycling, and organics quantities from:

• Commercial customers
• Residential customers
• By county of origin
• By destination of the material

Hauler reports for 2024 were due on February 1, 2025. Please complete your 2024 reporting as soon as possible.

Reports are submitted by using ReTRAC Connect. Each hauler has a unique login (email address) and password in ReTRAC.

For more information, visit www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/solid-waste-reporting.

Help keep contaminants out of the organics

An organics load that was rejected due to contaminants in the form of trash bags and recyclable items, including glass bottles, aluminum cans and steel cans.

If you are repeatedly seeing customers set out contaminated organics on your commercial organics routes, county business recycling staff can help educate your customers on proper sorting and provide additional resources to reduce contamination of their organics.

Contact Hennepin County Business Recycling at businessrecycling@hennepin.us or 612-543-9298 for more information or to provide contact information for your customers who may need assistance.

When you deliver an organics load to the county’s transfer station, let the scale attendant know that you are delivering organics instead of garbage.

To prevent your organics load from being rejected, be sure to clean out your truck beds when changing between different waste streams, such as from recycling to organics. Remnant broken glass from a recycling route is a major contaminant of organics loads if not removed prior to start of organics route.

Another way to reduce contamination is to label your waste collection containers to help differentiate waste streams. Ordinance 13 requires that your waste collection containers be labeled and meet specifications detailed in the ordinance. Labels that meet these requirements are available from Hennepin County or you may apply your own labels that meet the ordinance. Contact Hennepin County Business Recycling if you’d like to order our labels, businessrecycling@hennepin.us or 612-543-9298.

Insurance reminder for 2025-2026

Reminder to please submit your newest 2025-2026 Certificate of Insurance. This is needed to stay current with your regional hauler’s license. Send to haulers@hennepin.us.

Visible truck number decals make everyone's job easier

A friendly reminder about truck number decals during the winter season. Drivers can take steps to make dumping easier and faster at HERC or BPTS by making sure their truck numbers are visible to scalehouse staff as they arrive. Numbers that are covered with snow, salt or dirt, which make them unreadable, will cause a delay as additional steps are needed to verify and accurately perform transactions.

Please contact haulers@hennepin.us or call 612-348-7813 for new, loaner, or replacement truck number decals. Trucks without numbers will not be allowed to dump.

Program contact

612-348-7813
haulers@hennepin.us

hennepin.us/wastehaulers

Per Minnesota Statute 115A.93, licensed waste haulers are required to submit data to the MPCA, which is then shared with the counties. The data reported is garbage, recycling, and organics along with the first facility it is delivered to. Data for 2016 should already have been provided. For 2017 and beyond, metro area haulers are required to report quarterly.  May 1 (Q1), August 1 (Q2), Dec 1 (Q3), and Feb 1(Q4). The reporting forms are in ReTRAC https://connect.re-trac.com/login. If you have questions about the reporting, contact Peder Sandhei at 651-757-2688 or peder.sandhei@state.mn.us.