Trash Hauling with CPA: A Vote of Confidence

Pastor Davis:    I understand you might like to hear about St. Luke’s Episcopal Church’s experience with the Community Purchasing Alliance (CPA) and trash hauling services procurement. 

In 2016, St. Luke’s was under a rather predatory trash and recycling hauling agreement with a large national company for a number of years with steadily escalating costs that had risen substantially above the prevailing market values.  We raised our concerns with CPA.  They examined our contract and recent invoices and told us we were being taken advantage of.  They offered to help us move to a CPA-preferred local vendor at a rate close to one third of what we were paying.  They introduced us to a local attorney who specialized in abusive trash hauling service agreements, who we engaged (at a reasonable fee) to get us out of the agreement quickly.   We then contracted with Chosen Vendor* for our trash and recycling hauling service needs.  For the first nine months,  Chosen Vendor performed very well for us.  But unfortunately, they were  acquired by a larger, regional firm in January 2018 and service began to deteriorate in April.  I contacted CPA about this in June after we decided we could no longer tolerate the merged company’s irregular pickups.   CPA immediately began working with us to identify possible candidates to for our trash/recycling needs.  CPA made the initial contacts with three vendors and together we narrowed this down to one vendor.  CPA was able to negotiate the same CPA-agreement terms we had with Affordable Refuse which are much more favorable and fair to St. Luke’s.  CPA also managed to get us the same pricing that we had with Chosen Vendor.  

I am very pleased with CPA’s service to St. Luke’s in this area.   We have also worked with the CPA in electric power supply procurement and obtained a cost-effective supply agreement that includes 100 percent wind power at a good rate.   We believe we have more than recovered our CPA membership fees through the savings and support we get through the CPA.

I hope this is useful as you consider your options for trash hauling.

  Bill Casson, Jr. Warden, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church-Bethesda

*At the request of Mr. Casson, we have redacted the name of our preferred vendor.