If you’ve been waiting months for the city to deliver a trash can you ordered over the summer, you’re not alone.
D.C. is out of them.
All of them: the 96-gallon “supercans” that most residents use for city trash collection, the smaller trash cans and both the larger and smaller recycling cans, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Works confirmed.
“They’re on back order; we’re waiting for them to come in,” Chris Rodriguez, the agency’s interim director, told The Washington Sun. “It’s a supply chain thing. We ordered them in August.”
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The agency hopes the cans will be here by Thanksgiving, Rodriguez said.
When asked for more details like who the city’s vendor is, whether this is a typical wait time and how many orders are backlogged, a department spokesperson told The Sun in a statement, “The order is being procured, and we are working with the vendor to get containers to residents as quickly as possible.”
The delay has frustrated Washingtonians such as Wendy Bader, a Ward 3 resident who paid for a new trash can in August that she was told would be delivered by Sept. 20.
“I do not understand how the city can simply be out of trash cans,” Bader wrote The Sun in an email. “The city requires that residents use these particular cans for trash pick-up and requires residents to pay for these cans.”
The price of new trash cans depends on their size and function, ranging from $45 to $62.50 for non-seniors, or $25 to $30 for seniors, according to DPW’s website. To order one, residents can either go through that site or call 311.
D.C. has received about 2,600 311 calls since Aug. 1 from residents looking for a new supercan or trash can to be delivered to them, according to a Sun review of call data.
“People are constantly ordering cans for one reason or another, so we’re constantly ordering cans,” a DPW spokesperson said. “It’s a cycle.”
One reason residents might order a new can is that rats tend to chew through the plastic of the standard city-issued ones. That issue has become so widespread that the department is rolling out a pilot program that’s placing rodent-proof containers in high-traffic areas. There are currently 51 around the city, according to DPW.
“Although this seems to be a relatively small matter, trash disposal is a vital basic city service, and is important to the safety and quality of life of all residents, especially given the massive and growing rat problem throughout the city,” Bader wrote.
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