Glendale : Bids Sought for Trash Bins

By next year, automated trucks to pick up garbage and trash from special containers will be in use throughout Glendale.

On Tuesday, the City Council advertised for bids for 11,700 more of the special containers, to complete the program by April or May. Already 19,500 are in use.

The service began in May, 1990, in five test areas with 5,500 homes. By next year, 27,500 single-family homes and apartment buildings with up to four units will use the pickup system. Larger apartments and condominiums use bins that are collected separately.

Designed to increase productivity and reduce work-related injuries, the new automated system allows sanitation workers to operate robotic arms from inside trucks to pick up 64- and 100-gallon wheeled containers. (Residents can choose the size they prefer.)

Thirteen new $114,000 trucks have replaced 24 manually loaded trucks.

Injuries to sanitation workers went from 45 last year to eight this year, a record that Public Works Director George Miller attributed to the automated system.

Fourteen jobs were eliminated; those affected were transferred to the city’s Green Waste Recycling program or the jobs were left vacant, he said.

Miller said most residents like the new service but have had trouble adjusting to the cans’ size: The smaller containers are 36 inches high and the larger ones, 42 inches. “Some people have a problem storing it,” Miller said. But, he said, benefits of the can outweigh its disadvantages: “It’s balanced, and you can wheel it down to the curb.”