By the first of the new year, residents of unincorporated Orange County will be rolling shiny new 95-gallon garbage and recycling carts to the curb.
The county has been holding a series of community meetings to explain the impact of the change from twice a week to once a week garbage collection. Recycling collection will also occur weekly.
Jim Becker, manager of Solid Waste, expects to see a large increase in the amount of recycled materials with the larger bins now available. That's been the case, he said, in most locations that made the switch from smaller crates that are carried to the curb to the wheeled variety that hold a whole lot more.
The county is using two vendors to produce the new bins and some of them are soon to be delivered to homes.
However, Becker cautions against using them until the new year, because different garbage trucks will be needed to collect the trash from those bins, and they won't be rolling down the street until 2016.