Trash collector skips thousands of bins in heat wave
About 13,000 homes in southwest Edmonton had their waste collection missed during last week's heat wave and the city is urgently deploying additional teams to sort out the error.
The missed collection of food scraps, recycling and garbage waste was due to training and staffing challenges of the contracted collector during the first week of the new cart system in the city's southwest. These communities started the source-separated collection during the week of June 28, the city's fourth of six phases in the staged transition to the new system.
A third-party company provides waste collection service to half of the single-unit homes in Edmonton and the city is working with the provider to address the collection issues so they don't happen again.
This week, city waste collectors have been dispatched to support the contractor crews to collect all of the remaining carts that were missed by the end of this week. Residents can expect next week's collection to occur on the regularly scheduled day.
“The city thanks Edmontonians for their patience as we work through the new collection changes. The city will extend the grace period in the affected areas for two weeks, where small mistakes in set out will be fixed and then collected, to help residents transition to the new cart-based system,” city spokeswoman Anna Kravchinsky said in a news release Thursday afternoon. “Waste Services is working with the contractor to help address these issues and will continue to provide support until they are resolved.”
Extra staff, vehicles and a refined training procedure are all being added to address the issues that have led to the delays to ensure all collections are completed on time in the future, the city said.
Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 30 president Eric Lewis said this issue is an indication city services should be provided in-house and not by third-party contractors. The union represents the city waste collectors who serve the other half of the city. Lewis said he expects to see problems continue to pop up if the service remains under a private company.
“When the city performed the same work under similar conditions, operations ran smooth. If the city kept more services in house, problems like this wouldn't happen,” Lewis said in a statement.
“When you privatize, you reduce the quality and level of service as the private company cuts corners to maximize their profits.”
These concerns come after city council approved moving forward on 16 of 18 recommended actions in the city's “reimagine services” plan, including the development of an expression of interest to contract out operations of the city's three golf courses, which would affect 26 city jobs. The city is also moving forward on a request for proposals to privatize cleaning and maintenance of buses, eliminating more than 100 city jobs in an effort to save $1.2 million annually.
If waste hasn't been collected by 10 p.m. on collection day, residents are asked to report the error using the Wastewise app, online or by calling 311. Under the new cart collection system, recycling and the green organics bin is collected weekly in the summer with the black garbage cart collected every two weeks.