Bossier City Working Out Minor Issues With Republic Services’ Trash Pick-Up

There are still a few glitches being worked out with Bossier City's new trash pick-up service. But city spokesman Mark Natale says Republic Services is doing a relatively good job so far.

One of the things he says he's seeing involves residents who utilize side-yard or back-yard pick-up, primarily those who have mobility issues. Some of those houses have been missed, but Republic is working on the problem.

He says in a lot of cases, residents just aren't putting their trash on the curb early enough. "They're starting real, real early on collecting the trash," Natale says. "At least by 6:30 in the morning, if folks can get their trash cans out, they're good to go." Natale says residents could also put those out by 9:00 the night before.

Some residents who are putting their cans out on time have experienced delays in getting them emptied. Natale says if someone's trash is scheduled to be picked up on Friday and is missed, crews will be back out on Saturday to get it.

"We're finding it's a learning process. A lot of these crews are new, they're still getting familiar with the streets," says Natale. "But hopefully in due time, we'll work all these bugs out."

Of course, there have been some complaints about the increased cost for the new service. "Any time you're going to increase services, you're going to get a few complaints," Natale says. "But we haven't been too overwhelmed by those types of complaints. We understand people who have concerns about the rates going up, but unfortunately, that's the cost of doing business." He says even if Bossier had renewed the contract with the City of Shreveport, garbage pick-up costs would have increased anyway.

Are you still wondering exactly what day your trash day is? Natale says that info went out on water bills a couple of weeks before Republic took over collection. But there are documents on the City of Bossier City website that can help you.

"There's a link to the right side of the page which includes two documents," he says. "One shows a map of the city and when the pick-up days are in each of those locations. And also, there's information where people can open up a document there on the city's website and look up their address."

Natale strongly urges residents to review the information, because it'll tell you where you need to place your containers, how many bags of yard waste you can have, and other important details. He says some of the delays residents have experienced have been due to them not properly placing their cans along the curb.