Trash day to change for 1 in 6 Houston households

Trash pickup, like a lot of public services, is one of those things we never give much thought to — aside from the times when a holiday pre-empts our regular trash day (like this week) and we have to figure out when to roll our beloved black city trash bin out to the curb. But come July 2, one in six Houston households will have to turn their thoughts to garbage: On that day, new trash collection routes will go into effect for around 67,000 households in the city.

The change comes as the city takes over 23 routes serving about 85,000 customers whose trash used to be collected by Republic Waste Services, a private company whose contract is expiring this summer. While the city was making arrangements to take over those routes, the Solid Waste Department figured it was a good time to take a look at all the trash routes and rethink some of them in order to boost efficiency and save money — hence the changes. Using special software, the city came up with new routes that allow drivers to avoid active school zones and include a lot of right turns (the robotic arms that pick up the trash bins are on the right side of the trucks, so right turns make sense). An information campaign, including direct-mail pieces, radio ads and neighborhood signs, is planned to let people know about the new routes, but officials know there will still be confusion. "We hope that most of our customers will get the message, but we know that a number of them won't," city solid waste director Thomas "Buck" Buchanan told the Chronicle.

Mayor Bill White said the city would prefer not to change the trash schedules, but doing so is a smart move based on the projected increase in efficiency and decrease in cost. The goal is to avoid what happened when the city took over a number of routes in southwest Houston that had been served by private companies: There were lots of missed pickups and (as you'd expect) unhappy residents. And for a city politician, that's not a good thing, White said. "Mayor Louie Welch gave me advice that, whatever I did, to make sure garbage was picked up," he said. "I never have forgotten that advice."

- Check out a map of the new routes (PDF)