[Durham INC] trash pickup confusion

[RW Pickle]

A holiday on Monday caused the trash/yard waste/recyclables to be
scheduled for Wednesday pickup. Maybe that worked out like it should have
or maybe it was as confused as the rest of the week ended up being.

My trash/yard waste/recyclables is a Tuesday scheduled pickup. Well, we
had a little snow on Tuesday and that didn't happen. That day, I got my
morning news papers, my mail was delivered; even FedX and UPS made their
deliveries that day. But the trash/yard waste/recyclables at the road did
not move.

So you call OneCall to see what the deal is. They tell you the Tuesday
pickup will be done on Saturday. You can probably still call and hear the
pre-recorded message that tells you all of this as the 560-1200 number is
answered. So you bring your trash/yard waste/recyclables in off the street
because you're in violation of City Ordinances for leaving it out.

So Thursday rolls around and you begin to see that recyclables in
hit-and-miss areas across the neighborhood have been picked up. It makes
no sense since OneCall is telling you a different schedule, so you just
wonder...

Then Friday rolls around and you see a TFC truck across the Park picking
up recyclables. But I've already rolled mine back up the hill anticipating
a Saturday pickup. So you call TFC and tell them they missed yours but the
truck is just across the street (thinking they will get it...). They never
return to pick them up. So a call back to OneCall yields nothing but
confusion and they direct the call to Solid Waste to find out if they'll
be back on Saturday (when OneCall has told they would) yielded no answer.
Solid Waste said they "had no idea" what was going on. Because as I was
calling them, a yard waste truck rolled down my street picking up yard
waste. So are you as confused yet as I am about what is going on?

Solid Waste said to put the trash/yard waste/recyclables out on Saturday
and they would be picked up as scheduled. So we'll see. So far everything
I have been told has been different with all of the pickups being done at
other times. And then, as if all this isn't strange enough, if everything
works out, they'll be back in about 60 hours to pick it all up again. How
much waste do they think we generate in such a short period of time? Maybe
we could just wait until our regularly scheduled day for pickup since it's
so screwed up already. Save the tax payers some bucks... Cut down on our
carbon emmissions... Save some money in overtime... Afterall, it wasn't
that long ago we learned Solid Waste was already some $160K over budget
for the year.

Was your trash/yard waste/recyclables pickup this week a mess as well? Let
us know. I did see where they were going to start recycling our Christmas
trees (as they said they were doing until the news media caught them and
made it public) instead of hauling them off to VA. The Lemur Center has
been begging for Christmas trees. Why not contact them. Or in the spirit
of our new City Manager's proposal of departmental cooperation, let Urban
Forestry drive around the City with a chipper truck and do all the trees
in one pass. It makes more sense to handle them once instead of Solid
Waste picking them up and then hiring a contractor to grind them up. But
giving them to the Lemur Canter is free for just hauling them there.
Sometimes it all makes no sense...

RWP
27 Beverly