The City of Knoxville staff provide trash and recycling services throughout the Downtown Knoxville Alliance (DKA; formerly known as the Central Business Improvement District or CBID) every day of the week. This differs from outside of the DKA, where the City's contracted waste hauler, Waste Connections, services eligible households.
While all newly built construction and most larger buildings throughout downtown, such as hotels and apartment complexes, contract out their waste services with a private hauler, space constraints in certain areas of the DKA prevent all entities from being able to do so. Due to this, City staff provide this necessary service.
Currently, there are over 700 trash and recycling carts throughout the DKA.
These carts are not assigned to any business or residence in particular and are for anyone's use. Due to limited space, these carts are strategically placed throughout downtown -- residences and businesses are encouraged to grab a trash or recycling cart, wheel it to their location to fill up, and then wheel it back to where it came from to be collected.
- Do not place garbage or recycling on the ground as this leads to littered streets, stormwater contamination, unsightliness, and the risk of injury to our waste collection staff. All refuse should be placed in the appropriate container.
- Unlike for trash disposal, please do not bag recycling! Plastic bags are not recyclable; recyclables should be loose in the cart.
- All cardboard boxes should be completely broken down to allow for maximum capacity of each recycling cart.
Over the last 10 years, the DKA has grown exponentially. This is great! However, our current system of collecting trash and recycling from 95-gallon carts has reached capacity. In order to appropriately service our growing downtown area, we must modernize our waste collection system.
The City hired consultants to assess our current method of waste collection and provide insight to what could best accommodate this bustling area. Their recommendation was to install trash and recycling compactors to replace the 700 carts.
We are currently going through the process of identifying the best locations to install compactors. Our goal is to get these compactors off the street but doing so will require public/private partnerships. It will likely take a couple years to completely overhaul the current cart collection system.
The compactors will have cart tippers on them to allow you to still place your trash or recycling in the cart, roll it to the nearest compactor, attach it to the tipper to dump, then roll the cart back to your business/residence to store out of sight. After receiving community input, you should not have to walk more than a block to a block and a half to dispose of your garbage.
More information is forthcoming as we begin installing compactors. Thank you for your patience!