Monday marks the start of a highly anticipated week in Baltimore City, weekly curbside recycling begins again.
“You don’t have to guess which week to put it out anymore,” said Mayor Brandon Scott on Monday from the city’s Eastern Sanitation Yard.
On March 5th, crews will take to the city’s streets picking up properly packaged mixed-use recyclables.
According to the Department of Public Works, residents will have the same pick-up days as before. The main difference being that now, you’ll have to put your bin out on that day every single week. Residents may also notice that the time of their pick-up is different: the city has been working on “optimizing” the routes so some people who are used to a morning pick-up may now have an afternoon pick-up.
The city hasn’t seen weekly curbside services since 2021 when Mayor Brandon Scott suspended the service due to issues with staffing, the vehicle fleet, and a need for route optimization. The city then ordered a fleet of nearly 80 trucks and all were backordered due to nationwide supply shortages.
With 13 of those trucks finally arriving in January of 2024, the city then set to work retrofitting the trucks to fit Baltimore’s narrow alleyways. About 20 of those trucks will hit the streets this week and Scott says that the rest of the order is on the way. The unique trucks are known in the industry as “Baltimore packers.”