Evansville City Officials Answer Trash Questions
By: Shalah Sasse
Updated: January 30, 2013
The Evansville Water & Sewer Utility says its received 25-50 complaints about the new trash and recycling services. Wednesday night, city officials and Allied Waste were on hand to clear up the confusion.
As city officials talk about trash, some residents like Eric Berendsen came to Evansville's Traveling City Hall to get answers.
"It's good. Every thing's the same. It's kind of unified like a subdivision. Everybody's got the same mailbox, everybody's got the same trash can," Eric Berendsen said.
Berendsen lives on the city's north side. He says his single lane driveway is more than 300 feet long, and he's concerned about moving the big carts up and down the driveway and lifting them in and out of his truck.
"I'm young now, I can handle it. What happens when I get older? What happens in areas where its just not a 10 foot move where there's not concrete, where there's gravel," Berendsen said.
Crews started delivering the 96 gallon two-wheel carts earlier this month. Evansville Water & Sewer Utility Deputy Director, Ed Ziemer says all 84,000 carts should be delivered by the end of March.
"They're use to driving out and dropping two bags and go, now they got to wheel a cart out, they have to take the cart back in at the end of the day. I'd think that's probably one of the big changes for people. They'd rather drop the bags, once the trash guy picked them up, it was gone, you didn't have to do anything else. What they're not remembering is those days that the cat or dog tore that trash bag open and they had to go out there and get on their hands and knees and pick that up," Ed Ziemer said.
The new automated system has caused some confusion. Some people's trash pick-up days have changed. But there are some perks. People don't have to separate what they recycle any more. And, before the new program started, you could only recycle 1 and 2 plastics, now you can recycle 1-7 plastics. Ziemer says the new cart system not only improves sanitation, but the appearance of the neighborhood.
Ziemer says if the 96 gallon cart is too big, you can call Allied Waste and get a smaller 48 gallon cart, which will be swapped out in March.


