Blog: Waste Not Blog

City Begins Delivery of 1,521 New Recycling Carts

A dozen households in North Knoxville neighborhoods received new recycling carts before 10 a.m. this morning.

Public Service team delivering recycling carts

Public Service team delivering recycling carts

The two-man public service team of Cody Foster and Dustin Hinshaw had their list and checked it twice, dropping off the wheeled, 95-gallon carts to residents who made their request before May 4. New requests for carts will be addressed once the initial 1,521 are delivered.

Recycling team

Few people were in their yards or on their porches in the cool and dewy morning, however Jason greeted his new cart with a smile in front of a white house on Cecil Avenue.

Well, not his cart, exactly, he explained, but they’ll be getting acquainted.

In the household with his girlfriend and two toddlers, “I do the trash,” he says.

new recycling cart owner Jason

Jason recalls that he and his girlfriend were in the car together when she called 3-1-1 to request the cart. Earlier in the year, it had become clear that they were regularly over-filling the City-provided 95-gallon trash cart.

“We had been having trouble with our trash,” he says, “with the lid being open or an extra bag on top, and they wouldn’t take it.”

Recent policy changes hold that the City’s garbage collection contractor Waste Connections will only remove household garbage located inside the cart, which is lifted and emptied by the truck's mechanical arm. The resulting efficiency means $2 million per year in savings and fewer workers with injuries related to handling loose bags.

Jason’s family isn’t alone in their challenge to fit a week’s worth of garbage into the trash cart. In a statement made earlier in the week, Public Service Director Chad Weth called the City’s curbside single-stream recycling a “great remedy” for families.

Recycling and Household Garbage carts

Over the next two months, City crews will deliver the remainder of the 1,521 recycling carts, empowering a record number of Knoxville households to reduce the amount of their household garbage taken to the landfill.

Jason pats the recycling bin like a familiar friend in the making. “I feel like this will help a whole lot.”

recycling carts and knoxville skyline

Posted by ptravis On 08 June, 2017 at 12:53 PM