NEWS

Ads planned for trash Toter lids

Keith Roysdon
kroysdon@gannett.com

MUNCIE – Coming soon to a trash can near you: Advertising.

The Muncie Sanitary District has approved a plan to allow a Michigan company to cover the lids of trash Toters with advertising.

The advertising would be placed on thousands of the rolling plastic trash receptacles and generate revenue for the district, officials said during Thursday’s MSD meeting.

District board member Bill Smith asked MSD administrator Nikki Grigsby how much revenue and she said she’d “rather not” say.

“It’s a substantial amount of money,” Smith added.

The three-member MSD board approved the contract with National Cart Marketing, a Michigan company that specializes in trash receptacle advertising.

National Cart Marketing’s website promises “unavoidable” interaction with the ads, which are laid out in a grid on Toter lids and include QR codes that, when scanned by a smartphone, take a user to the advertiser’s website.

Board members said they would have the right to refuse ads from specific advertisers on MSD Toter lids.

Although National Cart Marketing’s website says that the cost of the trash lid advertising is $1 per cart, Grigsby told the board that the advertising the program would come at no cost to the district. The district did not release copies of the agreement at Thursday’s MSD meeting.

The district services 32,000 households, Grigsby said, adding that many of the households have two Toters.

Also during Thursday’s sanitary district board meeting, the board approved an agreement to expand its service area to accept sewage from Cowan High School.

Board member/district engineer Mike Cline said the district would construct a sewer from the school in the southern part of Delaware County to connect to a Muncie Sanitary District sewer interceptor along Ind. 67. Officials said the school’s existing treatment plant was failing and the school system had “reached out to us,” Grigsby said.

The project would extend the district’s reach four miles outside its existing boundaries, attorney Mark McKinney said.

Officials provided no estimates of the cost of the project.

Contact Keith Roysdon at 765-213-5828 and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.