KING COUNTY, Wash. — Waste crews are struggling to catch up with a massive backup of trash and recycling.
The garbage is still piled up in many areas across King County after winter weather shut down services for about a week. Certain areas in Maple Valley and Ravensdale again had services canceled because of icy and slushy road conditions on Wednesday.
But even where waste services have resumed, including 95 percent of Seattle according to Seattle Public Utilities, there are pockets of trouble.
“I’ve never seen it get worse than this,” said Sean Ewing, a Seattle resident in the Greenwood neighborhood.
“We’re starting our third week with no pickup,” said a woman in the neighborhood, who didn’t want to share her name. “They were supposed to come this morning (Wednesday),” she said.
Take a drive through North Seattle and you’ll find overflowing bins, bags of extra recycling stacked on sidewalks, Christmas trees, and birds having a heyday on food waste.
“Yeah, nobody wants to see that,” Ewing said.
Recology, a contractor for the City of Seattle, says crews are working extra hours into the night to catch up for all the days where winter conditions made roads unsafe for crews.
“We get snow maybe we don’t work for a day or two. It’s never a whole week, ever. I’ve been doing this for almost 15 years and I’ve never seen that,” said Gabe Alt, a lead driver for Recology.
He says garbage drivers are having to hit the dump yard halfway through a shift just to handle the massive volumes, and truck weights have gone up from nine tons in a day to 15 tons of trash.
“We’re putting in some long days, long days,” Alt said.
Plus, the holidays mean people were already generating more waste in every category, even before the backup.
“Turkey bones, ham, you name it,” said one waste management driver.
“Christmas with all the cardboard and wrapping paper,” Alt said. “New Year’s and all the wine bottles and whatnot,” he said.
For most of King County, Recology and waste management crews are mostly back on schedule, but in some cases, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to reach everyone on a route.
The extra bags set outside bins also means crews have to load waste into the trucks by hand, instead of being able to use the machines.
“You’re staying at a stop five times as long as you should,” Alt said. “We are doing the best we can,” he said.
In those cases, they’ll try to reach the missed blocks the following day.
But Seattle Public Utilities said that in certain very hilly neighborhoods such as Phinney Ridge and West Seattle, service was canceled again as roads were still unsafe.
“These impacted customers can set out triple the waste on their next collection day, or they can take garbage, recycling and yard/food waste to one of our transfer stations at no charge through January 9. Customers should let staff at the station know that you’ve been missed two times consecutively,” said Seattle Public Utilities in an email.
Most neighbors say they understand the challenges.
“It’s just time for patience and grace,” said Martin Jimenez, another Greenwood resident. “Everyone is getting pressed from every side, including the sanitation workers who I’m very thankful for,” he said.