In Kansas City, KS, Waste Management is making changes to adapt to supply chain issues caused by the pandemic. As part of those changes, the company moved to conduct recycling collection every other week. It’s a change that public sector manager John Blessing said will ease trucking demands on the streets. “We’ve been able to take 5,600 truck miles per month off of the street. That gives us the opportunity to reallocate those resources to some of the routes where we’re noticing driver shortages,” Blessing said.
According to Blessing, the change has actually resulted in increased recycling. “Every change takes a little time to digest, but we’ve seen not only the communities favor every other week recycling with less trucks on their streets and their communities, but also from the MRF standpoint, we’ve seen actually an increase in the recycling volumes that we’re collecting,” Blessing said.
According to Waste Management about 9,000 tons of goods are processed from the metro every month. In an effort to keep plant operations running smoothly, manager Tronnie Blair is urging people to keep items like pizza boxes and plastic bags out of their recycling.