We spoke with Council Member Abbie Kamin about the recent issues with recycling in the area. The root cause of the problem is that there is a shortage of drivers, and the current drivers work 6 days a week for 10+ hours a day to cover the city.

The decision was made to allow these City workers to take actual holidays, meaning they get to take the time off and don’t need to work longer hours to make up for the holiday.

This means a few things:

1. When our recycling falls on or near a holiday, it it likely that our recycling pick-up will be skipped that week.
2. During these non-pick-up weeks, you can store your recycling until the next scheduled pick-up or take your recycling to the Westpark Recycling Center (5900 Westpark Dr, Houston, TX 77057) – note that they do require the contents to be sorted.
3. You can add your recycling to the garbage for these weeks, if you are not willing to store the recycling or take it to the Westpark facility.
4. Please sign up for the Department of Neighborhoods emails, as they will alert you to these scheduled interruptions (see https://www.houstontx.gov/neighborhoods/updates/). We will also do our best to alter residents of this situation (please update your contact information to make sure you receive our emails!).

Remember that the City is one of the few large cities that does not have a solid waste service fee, so we get what we pay for in this case. We do understand that we do actually pay for these services with other taxes, but the City is also short on revenue lately with the local property tax revenue cap, so many departments are struggling with providing the services they once did.

If you wish to support a dedicated solid waste fee to get better and more reliable service, please reach out to CM Kamin to let her know (districtc@houstontx.gov).

We hope this helps explain the recent situation and plan for future missed recycling dates!