The Austin City Council delayed a decision on whether to keep sending its single-stream recycling to San Antonio for the short term.

The city is also looking to build its own single-stream processing center.

Texas Disposal Systems already has a contract with Austin for services including waste disposal.

Now TDS wants to process Austin’s recycling, and the company is offering to do it for free.

TDS is building a single-stream center that it plans to open by October 1.

The company has offered to process Austin’s recycling at no cost for up to three years.

"It's basically zero waste at zero cost," CEO and Chairman of TDS Bob Gregory said.

But the council recently asked companies to submit plans for single stream recycling centers.

Council got plans from seven other companies through that process, but TDS did not participate.

“I fully intended to submit a proposal through the request for proposal process. Then the City of Austin saw fit to disqualify TDS and Greenstar from the process. They really couldn't disqualify us. We had not been qualified in order to be disqualified," Gregory said.

The city reversed its decision on TDS. Greenstar will find out next week if it can participate.

TDS says the process doesn't allow enough room for discussion.

"Since we had a contract that could very easily be amended, we chose to be able to weigh-in to that discussion and just seek an amendment to the contract," Gregory said.

Council member Randi Shade said TDS has been a good partner for the city, but not participating in the request for proposal process may pose a problem.

"I can't imagine that we would get into a long-term contract with any vendor that hasn't been vetted though a competitive bidding process," Shade said.

For the short-term, the offer from TDS might be more appealing than an extension to the city's contract with Greenstar.

That contract has cost the city millions.

Thursday, the city delayed its decision on the Greenstar contract, because it doesn't want the contract to be any longer than necessary.

“We have to find a more cost-effective way to do it for the long-term because we've had a series of short-term solutions. We're still talking about short-term deals, and we need to be talking about a long-term solution," Shade said.

The city will consider its contract with Greenstar on February 25. It could also consider the offer from TDS at that time.