The City of Clearwater Transitions to a Unified Sanitation Fleet
City of Clearwater Solid Waste and Recycling Transitions to a Unified Sanitation Fleet; Recycling Collection Remains Unchanged
Residents may soon notice a new look to the city of Clearwater’s sanitation fleet. All sanitation trucks, including those that collect recycling, will now be brown. This move is part of a transition to a unified fleet model designed to improve service efficiency and reliability.
Recycling collection and processing are not changing.
While the solid waste and recycling trucks will now share the same color, recycling materials will continue to be collected separately and transported to our contracted recycling processing facility, Waste Connections in St. Petersburg, not to the Pinellas County’s Waste-to-Energy plant and landfill.
“This change allows us to operate more efficiently while maintaining the high level of service our residents expect,” said Kervin St. Aimie, Clearwater’s director of Solid Waste and Recycling. “By moving to a universal fleet, we can improve staffing flexibility, streamline maintenance and repairs, and reduce service delays for our customers.”
Previously, recycling was collected using white trucks and solid waste was collected using brown trucks. Under the new model, all trucks will be brown; the white trucks that remain with the fleet will serve as backup trucks for when the brown trucks are taken off routes for maintenance. All collection routes, schedules and recycling processing procedures will remain the same.
The unified fleet approach offers several benefits:
- Improved staffing flexibility during peak periods or employee absences
- Faster vehicle maintenance and reduced downtime
- More efficient parts inventory and repairs processes
- Greater service reliability for residents
Residents do not need to make any changes to their collection habits. The blue recycling bins that residents set out at the curb should continue to be placed at your curb on your scheduled collection day.
For questions about what can be recycled in Clearwater, visit MyClearwater.com/Recycling. To see the volumes of recycling that are taken to our recycling processor each month, visit MyClearwater.com/WeAreRecycling.