BOSTON — Residents and city councilors in Medford are expressing outrage over a plan to roll back trash service to once every two weeks, as Massachusetts environmentalists consider a statewide ban on residential food waste disposal.

Medford officials say they are prepared to implement biweekly waste collection in July 2027, following guidelines they assert have been worked on over the years. The plan, though, has generated sharp backlash from residents and city councilors who argue that the rollback should be abandoned.

Critics are taking exception to how Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn and other officials formally announced the scale-back from the current weekly trash collection.

Officials issued a press release on Nov. 13 highlighting how the city secured a $200,000 grant from the state Department of Environmental Protection to support its so-called “zero waste” initiatives.

The release covered how the grant is the second that the state DEP has issued to the city to purchase curbside organics collection carts. In 2024, the state helped launch Medford’s residential compost collection program.

City Council President Zac Bears is slamming officials for “burying the lead,” as the move to biweekly collection wasn’t mentioned until the bottom half of the release.

“We’re not seeing any of the benchmarks that would lead us to believe that this is a good change,” Bears said at last week’s council meeting. “And I think to have not laid that groundwork … and the fact that this was not the lead of the press release … has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.”

“I think it’s set up this program for failure because I think there’s no trust in it,” the council president added.

Under the new service, residential 64-gallon trash carts will be collected every other week, along with recycling at no charge, beginning in July 2027. Officials say the baseline will “equate to 32 gallons per household per week.” Residents could continue to lease additional 64-gallon trash and 96-gallon recycling carts.

That service volume, officials say, meets the state’s criteria for the DEP’s “Pay As You Throw” program, making the city eligible for the grants.

Moving to a biweekly collection would save the city over $1 million per year at a time disposal costs are rising, according to estimates.

“We know that most of what we throw away isn’t trash, most of it is compostable and recyclable,” Public Works Commissioner Tim McGivern stated in the release.

“So we are changing the structure of Medford’s collection program,” he added, “to prioritize composting and recycling. By keeping food waste separate, we will also keep our recyclables cleaner so that more of them will actually be recycled.”

The controversy in Medford, a city of roughly 60,000, comes as the state DEP is considering a two-stage expansion of the state’s food-waste disposal ban.

In the first stage, officials are looking to implement a ban on commercial food waste disposal as early as 2028. That could then be followed by a ban on residential food waste, no sooner than November 2030.

But for either of those to come to fruition, officials have said there must be an extensive period of public feedback.

A Medford task force formed in 2022 developed guidelines that would lead to more effective trash collection services, Steve Smirti, the city’s director of communications, told the Herald on Saturday. The body had a consensus that the city had to “reduce trash volume, make curbside composting more accessible, and reduce the wear and tear on our roads,” he said.

“To do this,” Smirti said, “the Task Force … recommended the eventual transition to every other week trash collection and the implementation of a free curbside composting program. For financial and environmental reasons, especially, the Mayor agreed.”

City Councilor Kit Collins, a member of that task force, said the rollback surprised even her, especially in the manner it was announced.

“I had no idea that this was how the administration was planning to roll out this change,” she said, “because so many of our conversations were really guided by the fact that any major change involving our recycling, our compost, or our trash pickup would need to be preceded by such thorough outreach into the community to really get people on board.”

The pushback has prompted officials to “refocus” their “communication strategy on education and soliciting public feedback to help identify specific challenges faced by our residents.”

“The Mayor believes that the Council is on board with this plan,” Smirti said, “as they voted for the contract in 2023 knowing that the every other week trash program was being developed.”

“But after public input and outreach,” he added, “if they want to pivot from this plan … the Mayor will certainly work with them.”

Medford resident Cheryl Rodriguez is warning officials that she fears biweekly trash collection would result in conditions that nearby cities and towns experienced during a summer-long trash strike.

“What Malden looked like during the trash strike will become our new normal,” Rodriguez said. “Biweekly trash pickup is disgusting and irresponsible. We should not encourage our rat population to grow.”

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