Some San Antonio residents seeing changes in garbage, recycling collection times

San Antonio city officials said about 80% of 370,000 the San Antonio Solid Waste Management Department's residential customers are now starting to have different collection days for their garbage brown cart, recycling blue cart and organics green cart.

SWMD Director David Newman said collection schedules changed Nov. 7, adding the city’s growth and customers producing more waste are the driving factors behind this initiative of route “rebalancing.”

“Let me emphasize that we are not changing any of our services or fees; we are only changing the days of collection. Simply stated, our routes have gotten too big,” Newman said in a statement.

The city said the workload increase has caused drivers to work overtime due to making three trips to the landfill rather than the optimum two trips per truck and per route, Newman said.

“Rebalancing routes will make them shorter, allowing employees to finish on time and will also get trucks back to the maintenance shop in time for them to be serviced. In turn this will mean more consistent and better service for our customers,” Newman said.

A news release said the SWMD has added 15 new drivers to support this change, eliminating Saturday collections altogether.

Additionally, the change in collection dates will save the city $2.5 million, eliminating the need to buy additional trucks, which cost approximately $400,000 each, the release said.

The SWMD said it is reminding customers that their collection will not be missed if they set their carts out on the previous collection day schedule; however, they are urged to go online or call 311 to check their new collection day schedule to avoid further confusion.