Baker Sanitary expands curbside recycling to Haines, Baker Valley homes

Haines and parts of Baker Valley will get curbside recycling in June, giving rural Baker County households a new way to handle everyday waste without making extra trips to Baker City. The added service comes with a blue 95-gallon cart for an extra $7 a month, compared with $6.24 a month for Baker City customers who already have curbside recycling.

Baker Sanitary Service said the expansion will cover Haines and Baker Valley homes whose garbage is picked up on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. If enough Monday and Tuesday customers want the service, the company said it may be able to add them later. The new recycling pickup will follow the same every-other-week schedule as garbage collection.

The change matters because it brings a service that is increasingly shaped by state rules into communities that had been left out. Oregon’s Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act, Senate Bill 582, passed in 2021, took effect Jan. 1, 2022, and statewide recycling program changes began July 1, 2025. Baker City crossed the 10,000-resident threshold that triggers tougher requirements when the U.S. Census Bureau counted 10,099 residents in the 2020 census, and later estimated the city’s population at 10,135 in July 2024.

That growth helped push Baker City into the group of Oregon cities that had to move toward curbside recycling. Baker City Council approved Baker Sanitary’s curbside recycling plan on July 9, 2024, making the company eligible for about $1.4 million in state grants for a truck and rollcarts. City officials said that funding helped keep rate increases lower than they otherwise would have been.

Baker Sanitary, which has served Baker County since 1962, began emptying Baker City recycling carts during the week of April 13. The company’s website says residential recycling in Baker City is collected every other week on the same day as garbage pickup, while commercial customers are collected every other week on Wednesdays.

The accepted materials include plastic bottles, cardboard, milk jugs, aluminum cans, newspapers, magazines, paperback books and catalogs. For Haines and rural Baker Valley residents, the new service reduces the friction of hauling recyclables themselves and extends a county service that was long concentrated in Baker City. Baker Sanitary’s move also suggests that recycling access in Baker County is likely to keep broadening as state standards tighten and more households ask for service.