An entire town is down in the dumps. A town in Virginia is struggling to get rid of its trash after several garbage collection companies refused to collect. The reason — there's just two much trash.
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We're talking garbage that's several feet high outside of some residents' houses. Recently, Updike Industries announced that it was terminating its contract for the town of Gordonsville. Things got so bad that the company terminated the contract six months before it was set to expire.
That leaves the town, which has 1,500 people, to find a new trash service before January. So what's the issue? Well, Updike said that residents frequently had three-foot high stacks of trash outside their homes. This exceeded the 64-gallon-per week limit on households.
The company collected more than three times that amount per week. In fact, they needed an extra truck just to hold it all.
"We were showing up at houses and there were multiple full trash cans and piles of trash we're expected to pick up," Updike operations manager Karl Thornhill said. "It was more than 64 gallons at multiple houses and was becoming unsafe for our drivers who must get out and collect the trash instead of using the automated arm to lift the cans."
Garbage Battle
Gordonsville lost another garbage collecting service two years prior for the same reason. It got so bad that Updike had to leave some trash behind. Officials have ignored their requests for a compromise, and the company says it has communicated limitations to residents.
Gordonsville Mayor Bobby Coiner, meanwhile, is blaming the company.
"Updike was never picky about enforcing that [the 64-gallon limit] before, so it wasn't a problem. After complaints they started going by the letter of the contract and holding households to the contract amount," he wrote. "If Updike will do their very simple job of picking up the trash, there will be no problems going forward."
The trash company reportedly tried offering residents larger cans. But that still didn't solve the issue.
"Updike purchased and delivered the bigger cans last year, and it just wasn't enough," Audrey Updike said. "We continued to service everyone when the amounts of trash continued to increase, even though it was more than our contracted amount, and that wasn't enough either. We want to provide great customer service, but the town has just not worked with us."
My question is why do they have so much garbage? Like that's a lot.
