Winnebago County solid-waste official outlines limits and options for composting, bulk-waste pickup

Kelly Reyer, director of Winnebago County Solid Waste, told the Oshkosh Sustainability Board on June 2 that the county’s solid-waste operation is an enterprise fund that pays for services with tipping fees rather than tax-levy dollars and lacks staff, space and equipment to run a county-scale composting program.

Reyer said the county accepts residential yard waste, bulky trash, appliances, e‑waste and other items at its transfer station and that household hazardous waste events run May through October with no cost for households but require appointments. “A lot of people don’t realize that Winnebago County, our department, our solid waste department is not on the tax levy. We are the only department that is not on the tax levy, so we don't directly get taxpayer dollars to fund our programs,” Reyer said.

The county sends mixed recycling to the Tri‑County Recycling material‑recovery facility in Appleton; Reyer said Winnebago, Outagamie and Brown counties coordinate there. Reyer described the county transfer station operations — trucks tip onto the facility floor, loaders move material to hoppers and semis carry it to Outagamie — and gave operational figures: the MRF handles about 13–16 recycling trucks per day for the county’s haulers and private collectors and processes roughly 80,000 tons per year with an 11.3% residual rate.

Reyer reviewed composting options and constraints. The county sold compost bins previously but plans to sell bins every other year and has seen limited demand; she said 18 bins were sold last year. She told the board the transfer station accepts yard waste (processed by a rotor‑chopper that limits branch size to about 6 inches), and that the county charges a minimum $20 fee for the first 700 pounds of trash at the facility. For unprocessed yard waste the county charges $10 for up to 500 pounds for grinding and handling in some cases, she said.

Board members asked whether the county would run bulky‑item curbside pickup similar to Appleton’s every‑other‑week program or Milwaukee’s neighborhood calendar model. Reyer said the county would accept material at its facility but emphasized that a municipal curbside bulky‑pickup would require an explicit list of accepted items, funding to cover collection and processing, and coordination to avoid overwhelming the transfer station: “We’ll accept it, but it’s also really important that people are putting out the right things.”

City of Oshkosh representatives described the city’s current yard‑waste permit and mulch redistribution program and said the city grinds woody material and offers mulch to residents; city staff also noted composting sites require Department of Natural Resources permitting. Reyer pointed to examples — Appleton’s curbside bulky program and Milwaukee’s Clean & Green — as different models the city could study.

Reyer closed by summarizing current county initiatives: ongoing landfill‑methane‑to‑energy operations (enough power in 2023 to run about 1,200 homes, she said), a county holiday string‑light recycling program that collected 3,400 pounds this season (a 54% increase), an outreach curriculum for third‑grade classrooms, and pilot conservation work at closed‑landfill sites. She recommended further study and neighborhood surveys before starting any local composting or curbside bulky pickup program.

Board members said they plan to place further discussion of composting and bulk‑waste pickup on a future agenda and to consider surveys or other public‑engagement tools to measure demand and preferred collection models.

Sources and attribution: statements and quoted text come from Kelly Reyer (Winnebago County Solid Waste), public board members (identified below) and city staff during the June 2, 2025 Sustainability Board meeting recorded on the public transcript. The county’s tipping‑fee funding structure, fees and operational descriptions were described by Reyer to the board.