Ditching the Dumpsters? Officials Eye Eliminating 22K Trash Bins Across City

The 70-year-old retiree, who lives in one of the areas of the city without alleys to put dumpsters in, said she has spent $1,900 on bug spray and deodorizer over the last 17 years to combat the trash receptacle’s gross effects.

“You can’t even sit on your front porch to enjoy it or nothing else,” she said. “You got to look at a trashy dumpster with trash piled up setting right at your front door.”

But a recently announced revamping of city waste collection services is poised to remove the dumpsters, which Gowens said should’ve never been there in the first place.

The plan includes removing 1,500 dumpsters around the city — ones that are in front of homes or in hard-to-access alleys — and implementing a cart-based waste collection service. Customers would get a 95-gallon plastic cart to place their waste in and roll to the curb to be picked up twice a week by new trucks that use robotic grabbers.

The plan is drawing ire from residents concerned about the possible spread of the cart service to all of Amarillo.

A recommendation for sweeping changes to Amarillo’s trash collection has been developed by new leadership in the city’s Department of Public Works. Raymond Lee, the department’s director since February, was previously employed in public works in Dallas.

“If you look at any city that you would consider premier in solid waste collection, that does it very well, they are using a cart service to do it,” Lee said.

The City of Dallas provides all residences with plastic roll carts for collection once a week. Lee’s ultimate plan is to began a switch to a similar collection strategy, replacing most of the roughly 22,000 dumpsters in Amarillo.

But, for now, Lee and city staff are proposing moving forward with two initial phases expected to take about three to five years and $2 million to implement.

The city expects the changes to impact 16,500 of Amarillo’s 70,000 residential and commercial customers. Still, most people with alleyway dumpsters would not be affected, staff has emphasized.

The first phases involve getting rid of 1,500 dumpsters on sidewalks or streets — like those in Gowen’s neighborhood — and also in alleys that are narrow, difficult to access or have dead ends, which city drivers have to reverse huge trucks out of.

The initial phases also include replacing the city’s hand-collection service.

In neighborhoods like The Vineyards of Amarillo, where there are no alleyways, residents place bagged trash by the curb for hand-pickup twice a week. 

A few older neighborhoods in Amarillo also use the service.

In Amarillo, about 6 percent of all residential customers — or 3,600 customers — use the hand-pickup service, but that number is expected to grow as future developments forgo alleyways.