DENVER — Icy roads and sidewalks aren’t the only remnants of recent winter storms in Denver. Overflowing trash carts across the metro are as well, according to the Waste Management company.
Many are saying they have gone weeks without their scheduled trash picks, and are frustrated at the pile-up of garbage. In response, a Waste Management spokesperson told Denver7 the company will waive associated fees for extra trash set out for pick-up with the next scheduled service.
Denver7 spoke to William Silcott, a Waste Management customer in Englewood, who said he had been waiting nearly a month for his trash to be picked up. A truck showed up just minutes before his interview with Denver7 to collect, and by the time our crew arrived, Silcott had already filled his trash cart again with garbage bags that didn't initially fit in the cart.
“It’s the holiday season. You have, you know, increased amount of trash. You have guests coming over, family coming from out of town, and it’s not very welcoming to come in and your trash cans are full and your kitchen stinks because the trash is rotten,” he said.
Silcott said he's spent hours on the phone with Waste Management customer service each week.
“I’ve called several times, you know. They keep saying, "We’ll come the next day. We’ll be there Thursday. We’ll be there Saturday. We'll be there Monday." And the trash cans just sit on the curb, you know, all week long," he said.
A Waste Management spokesperson blamed the “extreme winter weather conditions in December” for the delays in service, and said the company expects to resume pick-ups as normally scheduled barring “any new weather issues.”
“We appreciate our customers’ patience as we seek to recover service and safely collect all the waste materials,” the spokesperson told Denver7. “If we missed service due to weather, customers can put out extras on their next service day and we will not charge.”
While Silcott’s first pick-up in nearly a month happened on Thursday, his normally scheduled day is Wednesday. He now waits for Wednesday to roll around, hoping that his trash service will show up as scheduled and his days of calls and emails will come to an end.
“You sit on hold for maybe an hour before you get somebody. They haven’t responded through email,” he said. “It’s just — it’s a disaster. It’s a complete disaster.”
