Signature Waste Begins Service to Tega Cay

Since November of 2007 Signature Waste has serviced the City of Tega Cay. Signature pioneered the transition to company provided and maintained containers, biweekly recycling collection, and single day service to the City.

Glass Removed from Curbside Recycling

Just over 40% of all domesticaly produced comingled recycling was sold to China until early 2018. Recycling sorting center infrastructure was not prepared for the surge in demand and therefore limited what could be acceptably comingled. As a result, glass, bagged recycling, and various resin numbers aside from 1 & 2 became no longer accepted at comingled recycle sorting facilities.

City Moves Collection Fee to Water Bill

In an effort to improve transparency, the City migrates the fee into a line item service on resident's water bill.

Trash and Recycling Collection Days are Seperated

The City's growth continues to outpace expectations and Signature Waste, in collaboration with the City, elected to split service days for services to simultaniously reduce contamination and service times to the city in anticipation of continued growth.

COVID-19 Disrupts Trash & Recycling

COVID-19 put a near complete freeze on sorting facilities nationwide. Simultaniously, the pandemic also forced many to work from home, creating exponentially more household garbage than ever seen before forcing rates with Signature from $14.80 to $17.30.

While this was the largest rate hike in service history to the City, it still accounts for less than the CPI average inflation or 3% increase each year since inception. To this point Signature Waste had only increased hosehold rates by $0.10 in over 10 years since it began service to the City!

See our rate history to Tega Cay

RFP Goes Out

The City issued its request for proposals.
View the request for proposals (PDF)

Council Approves Signature Waste Contract

As a result of exponentially increasing disposal and contamination costs at recycling centers, the City of Tega Cay opted to drop the recycling from their included services and allow residents to solicit their own provider for recycling collection and disposal. Residents are now free to solicit their own provider for additional waste and recycling collection. Since 2020 the rate that had not changed dropped again for the third time since service began in 2007.

Signature Meets with City Leaders

Owner Joe Swinford, and Managers Angela, and Stuart meet with City Manager Charlie Funderburk, Councilwoman Heather Jones, and Mayor Carmen Miller to discuss the upcoming bid process after discovering it would be placed out for bid in advance of it's complete term.
During this meeting Mayor Miller articulates that the purpose of rebidding the contract before the end of terms is to "gather data" as a result of multiple 'no bid' entries from vendors during the previous bid process. It was suggested that the residents were satisfied with the service and the rate Signature charges was found to be less expensive than that of neighboring municipalities.
Additionally, questions were presented about service challenges to particular communities; namely Cameron Creek, and the means and methods which would prove most ammicable to satisfy their service needs.

Council Votes to Rebid Contract Instead of Extending Exsisting Agreement

In a 3–2 decision City council voted to initiate procurement for service following the existing contract’s base term September 30, 2027 expiration.

This would mark the first time the City has placed the service out for bid without completing either of the optional two, two year extensions.

RFP Goes Out

The City issued its request for proposals. View the request for proposals (PDF) for the complete details.

Note the following differences from the previous RFP:

• CPI adjustments prohibited until year 3 of the contract
• Reference requirements mandated from three municipalities of 4,000 homes or greater
• Weighted proposal scoring dropped pricing consideration from 50% to 40%
• Shortens contract termination notice without cause from 6 months to 90 days
• Removes restrictions on backdoor service eligibility without requiring an additional fee
• Both RFPs sentence one, page one, begin with the condition that the City "reserves the right without prejudice to ... any and all proposals received ... to negotiate any term(s) or provision(s)"

Proposal Submitted

View Signature Waste's Proposal here (PDF) Signature Waste was well aware that, of the last 9 public solicitations for bid at the time, the City had awarded the cheapest bidder 8 times, with the 9th being awarded to the next cheapest. With as much in mind, the offer was repetitively made to negotiate terms should the opportunity to award residents Signature service come down to price alone.

Section 14.2 Pricing Assumptions: "Final pricing may depend on ... negotiated terms."
Section 15.17 Final Contract Negotiation: "Signature Waste ... is willing to work with the City to finalize reasonable contract terms ... final pricing ... and service scope."

Unfortunately, no one reached out to Signature Waste to negotiate.

City Council Awards Contract to Active Waste

In a vote to award the contract Councilman Brian Carter made a motion to table the vote until unaswered questions were resolved. The motion failed 2-3 with Councilmembers Carter and Jones voting in favor and Concilmembers Foltz, Hyslip, and Mayor Miller voting against.
The motion was then made to award the contract to the lowest bidder and awarded to Action Waste.

Learn more...

While the bids from Waste Pro, Select Sanitation, and Signature Waste share a standard deviation of less than 4%, introducing Active Waste's bid into the dataset more than doubles the relative standard deviation to 8.81%. Statisticly, any value of a dataset with a Z-score over 3 is considered highly anomalous; Active's bid has a Z-score of 4.89.

Use the video controls to enable sound. Watch on YouTube

Replay bid award discussion
Replay public comments from Owner Joe Swinford & Manager Stuart Swinford

If you have questions about this bid process, the decisions councilmembers made on your behalf, or would like to contribute to the conversation reach out to your local representative!
Mayor Carmen Miller
Email or Call Direct.
Councilmember Thomas S. Hyslip
Email or Call Direct.
Councilmember Jim Foltz
Email or Call Direct.
Councilmember Brian Carter
Email or Call Direct.
Councilmember Heather Jones
Email or Call Direct.

Service Transitions to New Provider

Each resident will be asked to set out one Signature Waste trash container for collection and removal.
Active Waste will be responsible for delivering a replacement container to each residence, setting up interested housholds with backdoor or VIP services upon request, and beginning service as perscribed by the RFP presented in April of 2026.
It is unclear if the City will expect you to cancel your contract with Signature Waste for additional services, such as additional trash collection or recycling collection.