Why garbage day will soon change for 11,700 Syracuse households

Syracuse, N.Y. — About 25% of Syracuse households with municipal trash service will have new pickup days next month.

City officials this week will start sending postcards notifying all residents whether garbage day will be shifting for their home. Changes, the result of a data-driven analysis of all Syracuse sanitation routes, go into effect the week of Sept. 9.

Syracuse has not conducted a comprehensive overhaul of its trash pickup map in decades, officials said, and the result is an inefficient mish-mash of routes. The number of pickups on Monday and Tuesday, for example, is almost double what is done on Fridays. Individual routes on a single day can have high variation, as well, with one route having 300 stops while another has 800.

To address the problem, the city’s Department of Public Works teamed with its Office of Analytics, Performance and Innovation. A technology company that specializes in fleet management, New York City-based Rubicon Global LLC, was also brought on board as a consultant for $40,600.

The project had a goal of minimizing the number of residents who would experience a garbage pickup day change while creating as much consistency among routes as possible. The new map changes the trash schedule for 11,697 households out of 44,770.

The revised routes will save about 17,000 miles each year, which translates into roughly $10,000 in annual fuel savings as well as reduced maintenance needs for trucks.

The new map allows the city to service all households with 12 unique routes per day instead of the current 15. That frees up three crews that collectively make about $607,000 yearly to work on other sanitation tasks.

“Now those folks can be dedicated to litter picking or picking up tires, or picking up bulk requests,” said Corey Driscoll Dunham, Syracuse’s chief operations officer. “I think it plays into this idea of sanitation being more than just your weekly pickup. Sanitation is an effort to try and keep the city overall clean, so if we can dedicate more resources to that, then that’s a win.”

The city’s communication plan for the new routes include two postcard mailers to every household regardless of whether its day is changing. The first mailers go out this week and a second will follow in about two weeks.

In neighborhoods where the pickup day is being moved up to earlier in the week, the city Office of Neighborhood and Business Development will be conducting door-to-door communication, as well. Plans are in place to make sure new Americans are reached in their native language, too.

By the end of this week, the city will also have an interactive map posted online so residents can look up their address and find out what their trash day is going to be.

The trash route changes are coming about a month before the city issues new 96-gallon recycling containers that will replace the small bins residents have typically used. Recycling will be collected every other week instead of weekly. The day of the week for recycling will match the trash day.

About a year ago, city residents received new 96-gallon trash carts with wheels and lids that can be emptied into the trucks with hydraulic lifts. It’s part of a sanitation system overhaul that’s aimed at improving cleanliness and improving sanitation worker health and safety.

City reporter Jeremy Boyer can be reached at jboyer@syracuse.com, (315) 657-5673, Twitter or Facebook.