For weeks, recycling bins across Houston sat untouched, some for more than 40 days. Homeowners voiced frustration as piles of bottles, cardboard and other materials lined curbs throughout the city.<\/p>\n
Now, city leaders are offering explanations and a plan to get recycling services back on track.<\/p>\n
Interim Solid Waste Director Larius Hassen detailed a long list of challenges during a Houston City Council meeting, citing aging equipment, worker shortages, rodents damaging trucks and raw sewage backing up in facilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a trying 90 days,\u201d Hassen said. \u201cI was told by a previous member that we could never catch up on recycling. It\u2019s going to be five to eight days behind, and trash is two to three days behind. We\u2019re working 12 to 14 hours, seven days a week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hassen revealed the dire state of the city\u2019s recycling fleet. Of the 218 trucks needed, only a fraction are fully operational, and some are literally being eaten from the inside out.<\/p>\n
\u201cBelieve it or not, we have a rodent problem,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you don\u2019t clean out your trucks, rodents come in and rats are chewing the wires. We have maggots in the back of our trucks. We have locations where raw sewage is coming up in the facilities that employees have to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Compounding the problem, the city\u2019s 13 truck wash bays are barely functional.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of them work properly. We only have cold water,\u201d Hassen said.<\/p>\n
Mayor John Whitmire acknowledged the severity of the situation and defended recent efforts to fix it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s made drastic changes. Are we where we need to be? No,\u201d Whitmire said. \u201cIt has one drop-off for the entire 600 square miles of Houston. That\u2019s unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Currently, all recycling trucks must unload at a single facility, causing major delays.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of our trucks spend an abundance of time just waiting at the recycling center,\u201d Hassen said. \u201cWhat used to take 45 minutes now takes well over an hour and a half.\u201d<\/p>\n
The department is also grappling with a significant staffing shortage. Nearly 27 drivers left due to the city\u2019s retirement incentive program, marking a historic low, according to Hassen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the first time in the city\u2019s history that we\u2019re down that many drivers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
To address this, Hassen has involved side loaders, who typically work in automation, more actively.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had all the tools in place. They were just never tapped in and used to make the operation more efficient,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the department\u2019s routing software is outdated, and pickup routes haven\u2019t been updated in more than a decade.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just like the can keeps getting kicked down the road,\u201d Hassen said. \u201cThere were no operational efficiencies. No up-to-date standard operating procedures.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a result, entire areas\u2014especially recycling routes\u2014have been missed.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrash is our main priority,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes we have to pull people off recycling routes to make sure the trash is picked up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the challenges, Hassen is pushing a plan to turn things around. One major improvement is expected by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe great news is we own four transfer stations. Two of them are operable and two of them aren\u2019t,\u201d Hassen said. \u201cWe have one coming online at the end of November or beginning of December. That will help with the bottleneck.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hassen also announced plans to open a new customer service phone line staffed with live agents to provide residents real-time updates on service delays.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to have a number and a live agent for customers to call us to get an answer back to our constituents, to let them know where we are with everything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Both Hassen and Whitmire said these problems started before their tenure and pledged to make changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has been going on for six years,\u201d Hassen told council. \u201cThis is a problem that Mayor Whitmire inherited, and I inherited.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cToday is the day that we end. It won\u2019t be a 2026 story on missed recycling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For weeks, recycling bins across Houston sat untouched, some for more than 40 days. Homeowners voiced frustration as…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":69651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[10882,4345,49116,12578,49117,49115,358,3187],"class_list":{"0":"post-69650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-city-of-houston","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-recycling","11":"tag-recycling","12":"tag-recycling-pickup","13":"tag-solid-waste-management-district","14":"tag-texas","15":"tag-tx"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114868110558884680","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}