Frustrations continue to mount as City residents try to figure out the City of Pensacola’s sanitation schedule, the one with a curbside recycling option. People have complained about the difficulty in registering online for recycling, and those who do complete the registration are still waiting for their recycling cans to be delivered.
And there is the issue of whole neighborhoods having their garbage cans on the curb for days, waiting for the city sanitation trucks. However, starting October 1, 2023, the city stopped using ECUA’s Materials Recycling Facility and ended citywide curbside recycling for City Sanitation customers because of rising costs resulting from the high contamination rate of the recycling.
Background
On May 13, Mayor D.C. Reeves announced that curbside recycling would restart the week of July 14. “You’ll see a ton of mail, but we don’t want that mail to hit before the ordinance has been approved. So that’s our only delay now is just making sure that we don’t have things hitting people’s mailboxes that get changed by the council if they have any concerns.”
The ordinance passed by the council would allow customers to opt out for a lesser fee, $24.99. Those choosing curbside recycling or a second pickup day would pay $32.99 monthly.
The city promised “enhanced education and outreach” to teach residents “what can and cannot be recycled.” The new recycling cans were to be delivered starting the week of July 7.
Reality
Inweekly received several complaints late last week.
Here is one text message – that is typical of what we heard:
1) This is the City’s way of telling us they’re cutting back trash services to once a week instead of twice? No other notice was sent out.
Our whole street was on the same page as me. Our pickup days were Monday and Thursday. Everybody had their cans out Monday. Nobody’s got picked up, and they all stayed on the street until Thursday when they finally got picked up.
2) They notify us through a Facebook post on the Friday of the week that this is effective.
3) We are still going to pay full price as when we used to have recycling and garbage pickup in a week, then moved to two garbage pickups in a week. No ,we are down to one garbage pickup in a week and still paying full price.
That all doesn’t pass the reasonableness test. DC is crushing it this week.
FRIDAY PRESS RELEASE
The City of Pensacola did send out a “Reminder of Changes to Sanitation Pickup Days” to the media on Friday, July 18 at 2:42 p.m.:
Pensacola Residents Reminded About Changes to Sanitation Pickup Days
For a long time, City of Pensacola Sanitation customers have had three pick-ups each week — one for garbage, one for recycling, and one for yard waste. When we had to pause city-wide recycling nearly two years ago, we didn’t want anyone to feel like they were getting less for the same price. So, we added a second garbage pick-up each week to keep the level of service the same.
Now that opt in recycling is back, we’ve returned to once-a-week garbage collection and adjusted the base sanitation rate to match. If you’d like to keep the same number of pick-ups, you’ve got a couple of options: you can either have two garbage cans picked up on the same day, or go with one garbage can and one recycling can collected on different days—for just a small extra charge.
For more information about City of Pensacola Sanitation Services, visit the city’s website.
For questions about the pickup changes, please call City of Pensacola Sanitation Services at 435-1890.