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Metro Nashville hires help for trash pickup while awaiting bankruptcy court

Rachel IacovoneWPLN News
Trash and recycling pickup has been disrupted in Nashville in recent months.
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Metro Nashville has hired additional help to pick up trash due to the city’s ongoing struggles with its current waste contractor, Red River Waste Solutions.

Red River Waste Solutions filed for bankruptcy in the fall, and the city has been having trash and recycling issues ever since. Officials said that the city will be meeting the contractor in bankruptcy court on March 8.

For the next 120 days, Waste Management will be taking over 12 daily trash collection routes that service about 49,000 homes in Nashville.

The city has not identified a long-term solution yet.

“We have the national leading experts taking a look at how cities across the nation are doing it,” Scott Potter, director of Metro Water Services, said during a press conference on Thursday. “We’re going to have the next generation contract place us in a much more risk-averse position.”

Caroline Eggers, Environmental Reporter

Caroline Eggers covers environmental issues with a focus on equity for WPLN News through Report for America, a national service program that supports journalists in local newsrooms across the country. Before joining the station, she spent several years covering water quality issues, biodiversity, climate change and Mammoth Cave National Park for newsrooms in the South. Her reporting on homelessness and a runoff-related “fish kill” for the Bowling Green Daily News earned her 2020 Kentucky Press Association awards in the general news and extended coverage categories, respectively. Beyond deadlines, she is frequently dancing, playing piano and photographing wildlife and her poodle, Princess. She graduated from Emory University with majors in journalism and creative writing.

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