An increase in the omicron variant of Covid among city workers, followed by Monday’s snowstorm, is responsible for the cancellation and delays of recycling and trash can services in Baltimore today.
“The lanes of the city should remain quite slippery and any melting precipitation will refreeze overnight,” the Department of Public Works (DPW) said in a press release last night. “These conditions make garbage collection and recycling difficult for sanitation workers. “
The press release pointed out that snow removal from alleys and sidewalks “is the responsibility of the resident or the owner of the business”, which implies that garbage collection will not be attempted in uncleared alleys.
Recycling was officially suspended today (January 4). Other canceled services include street sweeping, lane cleaning, graffiti removal, waterway cleaning and the Rat Rubout program.
The misfortunes of recycling
Today’s cancellation will be in addition to service disruptions from last week when post-holiday recycling was never collected in dozens of areas across the city, ranging from Upper Park Heights to Greektown and Morrell Park.
DPW said on Friday that collections will resume on this week’s normal collection schedule. A year ago, in January, DPW reinstated recycling after a four-month service interruption.
Residential landfills will be open today for recyclable waste.