Sanitation/Recycling

The City of University Park has activated a critical services model beginning Tuesday, March 24 due to COVID-19. All essential public safety services are continuing to operate without disruption. The 911 Dispatch Center located at City Hall also continues to take walk-in traffic 24 hours a day.

Please take note of the following operational impacts for Public Works/Sanitation:

• Garbage and recycling continue to be collected on regularly scheduled days
• Place all trash in plastic bags to help limit exposure of our Sanitation crews.
• Brush, yard waste, and bulky items are NOT being collected at this time.
• The Transfer Station located at 2525 University is closed to the public.  
• The Peek Service Center located at 4420 Worcola is not accepting walk-in business.

A full list of service disruptions can be found here. 

The Sanitation Division is responsible for the collection and disposal of all municipal solid waste material within the City. Our staff collects residential and commercial solid waste, also known as garbage. We also separately collect recyclable materials and compostable yard waste.
 

The Sanitation Division consists of a Superintendent who oversees and manages all operations of the division, an Administrative Secretary, a Crew Supervisor, and 23 Driver/Collectors.  With an annual operating budget of approximately $3.1 million, the sanitation division collects in excess of 20,000 tons of materials from over 8,500 properties annually.
 

Transfer Station

2525 University Blvd
Hours:  7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday - Friday. The Transfer Station is closed on observed Holidays.
Use of the transfer station is restricted to residents, who must be present when off-loading. 
​214-987-5451
For more information about the Transfer Station, click here. 

• Residential solid waste is collected twice weekly by 2-person crews. Those crews manually collect the garbage (usually from the alley) and place it into the collection truck. Once filled, the truck is taken to the City’s transfer station located at 2525 University Blvd (just east of Central Expressway). There the garbage is emptied into a bin where a large ram compacts the material into large tractor-trailer units known as transfer trucks. Once filled, these trucks haul the material to the City of Garland’s Hinton Landfill for disposal.
• Commercial solid waste is collected from dumpsters by a single driver with large, side-loading trucks. These trucks are also emptied at the transfer station and loaded into the transfer trucks along with the residential waste.
• Residential recyclable material is collected weekly by 2-person crews. Residents place their recyclables in City-provided blue bin containers and the crews collect them from the alley and place the material in dedicated collection trucks. Once filled, the trucks drive to a recycling material recovery facility, FCC. There the material is sorted by type, bundled, and sent for processing.
• Commercial recyclables are collected from specially designated blue recycling bins in much the same way as the commercial solid waste. The commercial recycling trucks also dispose of their contents at the same material recovery facility.
• The City also collects leaves and grass clippings in biodegradable paper yard waste bags from the alley on a weekly basis.  Tree limbs, brush, and other bulky yard waste are collected from the front parkway weekly. All of this material is hauled to the transfer station where it is dumped into a second compactor and transfer truck. This material is hauled to a composting facility operated by Living Earth Technologies in northwest Dallas.

Between recyclables and yard waste, over 26% of University Park’s waste stream is diverted from the landfill and repurposed.