Curbside recycling to return 6 months after service suspended

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Mayor Lenny Curry announced Tuesday that curbside recycling would return April 4, about six months after it was paused.

I'm pleased to announce that curbside recycling will return throughout the @CityofJax on Monday, April 4th. I'm grateful to our citizens for their patience during these challenging and unprecedented times as we've faced issues happening in cities throughout the nation
— Lenny Curry (@lennycurry) February 15, 2022

The City’s Chief Administrative Officer, Brian Hughes, said its goal was to bring back the service after about three to six months to help crews get back on track with yard waste and garbage pickup.

“We’ve seen missed collections fall from the thousands, into the hundreds, and continue to fall downwards,” Hughes said after a Tuesday night town hall meeting with neighbors in Arlington.

Action News Jax dug through city data and found missed yard waste pickups dropped from 2,654 the week curbside recycling was suspended, to 309 the week of Feb. 7.

Hughes added that zero missed pickups is nearly impossible with a city the size of Jacksonville because landfills are on the outskirts of the city, which adds to longer travel times for haulers.

He said the city is working with council members on the idea of transfer stations for trash trucks to dump off loads in the city. Larger trucks would then pick up those loads and bring them to landfills on the outerlying parts of the city.

“We’re going to hold our contractor haulers’ feet to the future and hold them to what they told us,” Hughes said.

Each of the three haulers face millions in liquidated damages for the missed service.

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Waste Pro racked up $2,113,400 in liquidated damages, compared to Advanced Disposal with $1,335,175. Meridian, which started its contract with the city in September, has no fines. The company replaced Republic Services, which had $536,700 in fines before September.

“There was a payment for recycling stops that happened for six months. We agree with that. We have to find the right mechanism to make that up taxpayers,” Hughes told Action News Jax’s Robert Grant.

Taxpayers pay about $150 a year for the recycling service.

The 15 recycling drop-off sites city wide will disappear April 1 and curbside will return April 4. The city said over the next six weeks, it will focus on education about recycling. One idea is a mobile app for neighbors to scan recyclables to make sure they’re allowed.