Recycling Pick-Up Backed Up In Bradenton Due To Staff Shortages: City

BRADENTON, FL — Staff shortages continue to plague Bradenton’s solid waste division, causing the city’s recycling pick-up to get backed up this week.

As of Tuesday night, the department was still “working on Monday’s recycling route,” Jeannie Roberts, the city’s communications coordinator, said. The department “will move into Tuesday’s (recycling route) as time allows.”

The solid waste division has been dealing with a CDL driver shortage since July, forcing it to temporarily adjust its yard waste and recycling pick-up, switching between the two every other week.

When fully staffed, the department has 51 employees. On Tuesday, it had 14 staff openings, seven workers were out sick (including five out with COVID-19) and three out for other reasons, Roberts said.

The week of Jan. 5, the department got behind on yard waste pick-up because of staff shortages and Christmas tree collection.

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“Garbage pick-up is our top priority and will always be. We have not missed picking up trash,” Roberts said, noting that the staff shortage “is frustrating” for the department.

She said, “Again, we completely understand residents’ frustration. We are functioning as completely as possible with the issues we are experiencing. We want nothing more than to be on time with all of our routes. But we can't fully collect all forms of solid waste (garbage, recycling, yard waste and bulk items) if we can't drive all of our trucks and with the slow-down caused by frequent trips to empty the trucks we do have.”

Roberts added, “We know it's frustrating, and we want residents to know that we are coming at this problem from every available angle — increasing wages, adding sign-on and retention bonuses, changing policy and even paying overtime for workers from any department who are willing to work a Saturday to help us catch up on yard waste.”