Sanitation/Recycling

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.

• 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, McCommas Bluff Lanfill in Dallas. 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.