City of Erie considers all-electric garbage trucks
AJ Antolik, deputy director of public works for the City of Erie, explains why the city is considering purchasing electric garbage trucks.
Kevin Flowers, Erie Times News
The City of Erie’s free, first-come, first-served distribution of 35-gallon recycling/garbage cans, which began Monday, has been canceled because city officials were “overwhelmed” by public demand.
Mayor Joe Schember’s administration announced Tuesday night that Tuesday’s event was shortened and the distribution of cans scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday was canceled. The city recently announced that it has about 5,000 such cans on hand for residents, funded through a recycling grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
The cart-style cans were made available for pickup at 2001 Holland Street, part of the city’s public works yard, on four different days/times this week. Distribution began on Monday.
However, during Tuesday’s distribution, long lines of cars were reported from this area, causing significant traffic back-ups and requiring traffic monitoring/direction by the Erie Bureau of Police.
“We were overwhelmed by the success of the recycling container distribution and unfortunately had to end the event for everyone’s safety,” said a post on the city’s Facebook page on Tuesday evening. “The distribution on Wednesday and Thursday has been canceled. We apologize for the inconvenience. We will hold distribution events in the neighborhoods in the future, which we will post on our social media and website.”
City officials originally planned to distribute the doses on Mondays and Wednesdays between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. and Tuesdays and Thursdays between 4 and 7 p.m. City officials said the number of doses would be limited to one per household and that anyone wanting to receive a dose would have to show proof of city residency.
Information on how many doses had been distributed by Tuesday afternoon was not initially available.
For more information about recycling in the City of Erie, visit https://cityof.erie.pa.us/recycling.
