City services

What the Twiss Street Transfer Station Will and Will Not Take

You buy your dump sticker at the supermarket. That is the least strange thing about how this station works, and knowing the rest saves you a wasted trip.

The sticker system, and where you buy it

We are a dumpster company, so this may be an odd thing to lead with: for a lot of household items in Westfield you should not rent a container at all. The transfer station is cheap and it is there. But it works in a way that catches people out on their first trip.

Not at the transfer station. Not at City Hall. At the supermarket.

It is a perfectly sensible arrangement once you know — two locations with long opening hours and staff already at a service desk — but turning up at Twiss Street with a car full of furniture and no sticker is a wasted Saturday, and it happens constantly.

What the item stickers cost

Prices are subject to change, so check before you load up. But the shape is clear: for a few household items this is inexpensive.

What it accepts

Beyond the sticker items, a good deal goes in without an item fee:

• Appliances — washer, dryer, stove, dishwasher, water heater, microwave
• Batteries — rechargeable, Ni-Cad, button and car batteries
• Books for charity
• Cardboard and paper
• Electronics — laptops, DVD and VCR players, stereos, computer towers (TVs and monitors need their own sticker)
• Fluorescent lamps and bulbs, ballasts, transformers
• Lawn mowers — gas and oil must be removed first
• Leaves and grass clippings — loose or in paper leaf bags only
• Salvageable clothing
• Scrap metal — reasonably clean of non-metal components
• String lights
• Thermometers and thermostats

The City also runs single stream recycling at the kerb — paper, plastic, metal and glass together in one bin, no sorting.

Saturday-only and first-Saturday-only

Two restrictions that are easy to miss and account for a lot of wasted trips:

• Motor oil, antifreeze and oil filters — Saturdays only.
• Oil-based paint — the first Saturday of the month only.

And one that works the other way round: latex paint is not accepted at all, but the City's guidance is that it may be self-prepared for regular trash. Open the can, let it dry hard — cat litter or sand speeds it up — and it goes out with the household waste.

So the paint answer depends entirely on which kind you have, and getting it backwards means either a wasted trip or a can of liquid oil paint in your bin that should not be there.

What it will not take at all

The three exclusions that send most of our customers to us:

Read the first against a real project: a bathroom gut produces sheetrock, tile, a vanity and a toilet. None of it is accepted. A deck rebuild produces treated timber. Not accepted. A kitchen produces cabinets and countertop. Not accepted.

And the third against a real spring: storm damage, hedge removal, tree work and lot clearing all produce brush and wood, which the station will not take even though it happily takes leaves and grass.

There is no municipal route for either category in this city. That is what a container is for.

The curbside side of it

For regular collection, the rule is simple: any item considered household trash that does not fit in a designated bag requires a bulk item sticker.

But a long list is not collected at the kerb at all — household batteries, car batteries, motor oil, empty propane tanks, tires mounted or not, fluorescent bulbs, hazardous materials, waste from people or pets undergoing chemotherapy, paint of any kind, metal, construction materials (sheetrock, lumber, plywood), furniture including couches, chairs, bed frames, box springs, mattresses, kitchen sets and cabinets, appliances, TVs and computers.

Note that furniture is on that list. Curbside will not take a sofa; Twiss Street will, with a $10 bulk item sticker.

Pick-up can also be delayed by inclement weather, which in this climate is not a rare event. The DPW has a number for schedule questions.

Do not use a neighbouring town's rules

A genuine local hazard worth stating plainly.

Search for bulk or transfer station rules around here and you will get detailed, credible pages from neighbouring towns whose programmes are completely different. West Springfield runs its own DPW town yard with its own exclusions. Westford, Massachusetts — a different town entirely, on the other side of the state — has a well-indexed bulk item policy page with a one-item-a-week limit that has nothing to do with Westfield.

And there are Westfields in New Jersey, Indiana, New York and North Carolina.

Anything consequential should be confirmed against the City of Westfield's own material, or ask us — we work across all seventeen towns in this area and the differences are our daily business.

When a container is the right answer

• Any renovation or remodelling project. Construction and demolition waste is excluded outright.
• Brush, branches, tree work or lot clearing. Also excluded outright.
• Volume. Everything at Twiss Street has to fit in your vehicle and be carried there within opening hours.
• Anything you cannot lift. A container sits at ground level with a swing door.
• A whole-house or cellar clear-out you want finished in a week.
• Anything a contractor generated — that debris is theirs, and it is commercial waste besides.
• Business or commercial property.
• Any address outside Westfield, where the entrance sticker does not apply at all.

Call and describe what you are clearing. If Twiss Street will handle it, we will tell you so and tell you which stickers to buy. If it genuinely will not, we will put you in the right size container.