SEATTLE — The coronavirus pandemic has impacted virtually every aspect of everyday life. Even trash collection agencies have noticed a change in trends.
Waste Management, a national company with a big presence in the Northwest, says trucks handling its residential volume is up, but its commercial volumes are down.
In other words, we’re making more trash, recycling, and yard waste while we work from home, but trash coming from hotels, restaurants, schools and other commercial accounts have nearly stopped.
The agency says it’s dealing with “above normal” volumes, and the actual visitor count is about 30% below a typical spring.
Quantifying the amount of trash is difficult. For people who usually make a run to a transfer station, it has been difficult to drop items off with closures and varying hours during the pandemic.
“I think we’ll be able to handle the volume coming through,” said Matt Zybas, the director of Snohomish County Solid Waste.
At the agency’s transfer station at Paine Field, more than 3,100 vehicles came on Saturday, which was the first open day for the general public since the transfer sites shut down in the second half of March.
The utility has also made changes to protect employees and those arriving to dump the trash, with signs calling for social distancing and other measures.
Snohomish County are back to a daily schedule, though closing a bit earlier at 4:30 p.m. on weekdays. Seattle Public Utilities is maintaining a four-day schedule from Wednesday through Saturday for the general public, and asking customers to put off bringing in non-essential loads.
Spacing between customers is also slowing down the number of customers the facility can handle.