Cardboard at River Hills Recycling Center
Dust off the green bins: Metro announced curbside recycling, suspended since Dec. 21, will return Feb. 1.
In a release peppered with shade directed at trash collection contractor Red River, Mayor John Cooper says city employees got “innovative” to bring back the program, which he says he intends to extend to an every-other-week schedule in the next fiscal year.
Metro Water Services — which took over trash and recycling collection in July when Public Works became the Department of Transportation — suspended recycling so that resources could be diverted to normal trash collection. This came after contractor Red River failed to make its collected pickups for several weeks.
Red River filed for bankruptcy in October, and Metro is asking a judge to allow it to reassign its routes to other contractors.
“I want to thank Metro Water Services and the employees at its Waste Services division for working long hours to cover for the failures of a private company and get curbside recycling back on schedule," says Cooper in the release. "I am committed to starting every-other-week recycling by the end of this fiscal year."
