Garbage ain’t sexy, but it does tend to get people heated up. At least it did last night at the Ridgewood Recreation Center near White Rock Lake, where about 60 people turned out to hear about the city’s new OneDay Dallas program. That’s a slick way of saying that, starting March 1, all Dallas trash will be picked up just once a week, and you’re going to have to start using a blue recycling bin–and using it right–in addition to your grey bin. Currently grey bins in most parts of the city are picked up twice a week; the blues, twice a month.
Recycling remains voluntary under OneDay. But if you don’t use the blue bin properly and your gray bin won’t hold everything, you’ll have the “option” of ponying up $10.54 a month extra for another gray one. The city says that, following a couple of pilot programs in Northwest Dallas and Far North Dallas, it’s earned $2 million off recycled trash already, dough to be pumped back into the general fund.
Led by Mayor “Tom Terrific” Leppert, the city wants Dallas to join other “progressive” burgs like Philadelphia that recycle more than 50 percent of their trash–the current recycling figure here is about 6 percent–and it’s going to whack a big 64 cents off your $20.98 monthly bill for the added trouble and inconvenience.
Even so, some of the folks at Ridgewood Rec weren’t buying it.
Because several thousand homeowners in the area will have to start pulling trash bins to the front curb instead of using their back alleys, residents said property values would “deteriorate,” since trash-strewn sidewalks will surely result. Others complained about the recklessness of the city’s trash-truck drivers in general; still others kvetched about the cost of the new scheme.
“We’re paying for this, but we’re not getting comparable service,” snapped one. Yelled another: “How much is it gonna cost us?” Replied District 9 City Council member Sheffie Kadane: “We’re making $2 million on this project. What difference does it make what we spend?”
In the end, though, most in attendance seemed OK with the new plan.
In a little while a barrage of letters, “cart hangers” and phone calls will go out announcing your new “OneDay”–the day your trash will be picked up each week. So you better be ready–and have your recycling skills in order.
No pie plates, no styrofoam peanuts, no pizza-delivery boxes? Damn; this might be harder than I thought.
20 comments
If a household chooses not to recycle and they use 2 gray bins (let’s just say they already have 2 bins without saying how they got 2 bins), how does the collector know if they are paying the extra dough for the colletion of the second gray bin?
We’ve had the one day trash pickup and recycling for nearly a year. No problems with it at all. If anything, it’s easier to remember when the trash is being picked up.
Living in the North Dallas area which has adopted the “One Day” program, it couldn’t be easier…and a part of me feels I am making a teeny tiny difference by recycling my household discards. A little common sense might possibly clue one in on what should and should not go in the blue bin.
Now, I am baffled at how this “recycled” trash is actually recycled. The recycled stuff is dumped in an enormous jumbled pile at the Bachman Transfer Station off of Harry Hines. I saw it while dropping off some bulk trash one day (not very environmentally friendly, I know). Because nothing is sorted prior, there is broken glass mixed with paper, mixed with plastic, and god knows what. I wonder what happens next, other than the recycled material being discreetly pushed off into the large trash pit below. Hmmmmm….
Not a problem.
I have had to roll my bins to the curb for years. There is not a lot of trash scattered aroudf my streets.
I usually only put my grey bin out once a week anyway. But my blue bin is often full in less than 2 weeks
Thanks for the reminder — have to go fill out the city form for “you didn’t pick up my recycling when you were supposed to.” Again. After the holidays, when we’re overflowing.
OneDay hasn’t been as bad as I’d feared, though my neighbors and I have freely used each other’s bins on weeks when one or the other of us has too much garbage. But when they fail to pick up, rather than figuring that you’ll just wait till the next pickup day, you have to get them out there to do it. It’s a pain.
And it still chaps me that I may more for half the service I used to get.
This meeting was in my neighborhood and while I didn’t attend, I can understand why people here would be already peeved about the whole issue of trash collection. Some nearby streets have, in the last 3 or 4 years, switched to front curb pickup. Others still have alley pickup. On my street, it depends on which side of the street you live on. But for curbside collection here, the trucks that automatically pick up the grey bins never seem to work so it’s common to see the men empty these by hand — by bending over and picking the garbage out handful by handful. No wonder people at the meeting weren’t crazy about those bins or curbside collection. Alley pickup (which I have) is actually a neater process as no one uses the big heavy grey bins and regular trash cans or bags can be handled more easily.
@Just J – having toured a recycling plant (lucky me) I can tell you that they are staffed with numerous people working the constantly moving conveyor belts who sort the items by type (paper, aluminum, etc) and remove non-recyclable items to be discarded in the trash, so it should all be going where they say. I suppose you never know though.
I was skeptical of this program at first, but we’ve been doing the OneDay thing in my NDallas neighborhood for at least a year and it works really well most of the time. If either trash or recycle is missed, I’ve filled out the City’s online form and it’s gotten picked up the next day. I’d say that most weeks our recycle is as full or more full than our garbage. The only inconvenience really is having to have 2 different refuse cans in the kitchen, one for trash and one recycle. And I can never decide if beer bottle tops are trash or recycle. But I figure they’re metal (mostly), so they usually go in the recycle can, along with the emptied bottles.
My question is when will they start accepting plastic grocery bags with the recycling? I’ve been told those are a no-no for now at least, but man do those things pile up.
How is a 3 family household of guest residents supposed to handle this when their triple-decker ice cream cone of holiday garbage now appears every week because there’s only one day to cram it all in? What about the other residents who have to pick up the top two scoops that don’t stay in the cone when the automatic truck claw jerks one of these optimistic towers into the air and strews the garbage everywhere? This all sounds very wonderful with little connection to reality.
Not sure I understand the controversy about just having trash picked up one day per week. I’ve lived in DC and a couple cities in Virginia, and all of them had one day pick up. And in one recent city where we lived, all of the trash bags had to have a city payment sticker ($1/bag). Talk about an inconvenience! When we moved here, we thought the 2 day per week trash pick-up thing seemed very Texas-y. Everything is bigger here, including the amount of trash each household consumes – enough to necessitate trash pick-up 2 days per week. Yay for Dallas for moving in the right direction!
So, I’m still wondering: are the grey bins and the blue bins picked up on the same day?
@Bob: Yes.
In our North Dallas neighborhood, there was much wailing and moaning before we started one day pickup. Since we got it last year, the wailing and moaning has stopped, and people now seem pleased that it is working out well for each of us.
Wes, as for those plastic bags, you need to get a bunch of reusable bags and throw them in the trunk of your car to use when you go shopping. Once you get in the habit, it’s easy to reduce you plastic bag consumption down to near zero.
Wow. My city has had once a week pickup since before we moved here in 1993. Never had any issues except for the occasional burst bag or a neighbor’s improperly loaded loose garbage missing the truck on a windy day as it’s being dumped. Grocery bags? I pitch ‘em in the trash.
Is it just me, or is bulk trash pick up once a month an anomoly? I’ve never seen it before, but it sure is convenient. I’ve taken advantage of it a few times, but not sure I like the bags, limbs, and other crapola strewn about for 1-2 weeks before it is picked up…EVERY MONTH. I like even less those that drive the streets rummaging through the bulk trash to be picked up. I like least my neighbors boxes full of styrofoam peanuts that exploded as the claws of death squeezed, crushed, and exploded peanuts all over my yard. Oh well…overall, I think Dallas is pretty neat. Except for those road side advertising kiosks all over the place. Those annoy me. Ugly.
My family of five never seemed to need twice-a-week garbage pickup when we had it, but every-other-week recycling was not often enough. We’ve had the once-a-week schedule for both for a year and haven’t had any problems. However, we still get to put our cans in the alley. I agree that cans on the curb in front of your house isn’t going to be very pretty.
If you do the math, we used to have garbage picked up twice a week and recyle twice a month for a total of 10 containers a month. Now we get once a week for both, so that’s 8 containers a month. Not half the service ( and prob not half the cost savings either) . So the solution is just to use your allotted space wisely (and don’t stick your head in the garbage cart in the summer).
The 1X/wk pick-up – to my surprise – has been MUCH easier than expected. More importantly, with a weekly pick-up of my recycle bin, I am actually recycling far more than I ever did before. Proud to say we usually recycle more than we trash. However, before I get too excited, I would really like to know the truth about how recycling discards are processed after leaving my house…could be a dirty little secret.
Once a week is working well is Far North Dallas. Families who generate so much trash they need twice a week are consuming too many disposable items – symptomatic of our consumer culture.
The guidance the city provided for plastics was helpful. When in doubt – recycle. Much bettern than prior guidlines in which I had to check the plastic type for each item.
This sounds great until you consider what happens if your trash is missed on your one day (you are out of town, the trucks cannot get through because of snow, holiday)and you have to save 2 weeks of trash. This is a horrible idea and the insignificant direct savings are not worth the lifestyle change.