MURRAY – With questions still coming in after Murray’s sanitation service switched to GFL Environmental on Wednesday, city officials are telling residents to use only the new black trash carts and place the old blue carts by the road for collection.
Murray Sanitation Manager Ron Allbritten told The Sentinel on Thursday that all residential customers should now have a black GFL trash cart and should stop using the old blue Republic carts immediately.
GFL will only service the black carts.
Residents who have not received a black cart – or whose trash was not collected on their scheduled pickup day – should call GFL customer service at 270-762-0380. Although it is a local number, Allbritten said it connects directly to GFL.
All blue Republic carts should now be by the road for pickup. If a cart is empty, residents should lay it on its side to show it is ready to be collected and to keep it from blowing in the wind.
Republic began collecting its blue carts last week. Allbritten said he has received little to no information from Republic about its plans for retrieving them, noting that the carts belong to the company, not the city. Still, he said, it took GFL about three weeks to distribute the new carts, and he expects Republic’s collection process could take a similar amount of time.
Residents whose empty blue carts have not been picked up should contact Republic’s Mayfield office at 270-251-6001 or 270-251-6002. Households that still have trash in a blue cart should also call one of those numbers.
Allbritten said residents may see Republic crews using a U-Haul box truck to collect the old carts. Some people also may have seen workers in yellow vests striking carts with sledgehammers, but he said they are not destroying them – they are removing the wheels so the carts can be stacked.
In an update to the city council last month, Allbritten said most customers should see little change beyond the color of their trash cart. The city’s residential trash collection rate will remain $15 per month under the new contract.
Optional add-on recycling service will also remain on the same schedule, with GFL continuing to use carts with yellow lids.
The most significant operational change is that GFL has expanded residential collection to include Fridays, meaning some customers who were previously on Monday routes may now have Friday pickup. Those customers should already have been notified by GFL.
Residents who receive walk-up service because of a disability should continue receiving that accommodation under GFL, Allbritten said, but any customers who are missed should report the problem to GFL as soon as possible.
