Have you ever experienced extra monthly charges that relate to the dumpster on a property being over-filled? This often happens in cycles and many waste management companies have taken an expensive stance, with truck mounted cameras that allow the driver to send a picture to their billing and sales department for an extra charge to be added to the monthly bill. 

What are best practices for managing this? Here’s a list of management protocols that will help eliminate extra charges:

• Acquire the time and day the pickup is to take place.
• Inspect the dumpster area prior to each pickup. Have any overage removed from the container and enclosure.
• Make sure the pickup is made. A trail camera would be a good idea for this and will also monitor “after-hour” and weekends for “drop-off” trash.
• Get owners and/or tenants to buy-in, with a published pickup schedule delivered to each owner. This should explain how to avoid over-filling the container and not drop trash bags in front of the dumpster, blocking the pickup. Find out the cost for an over-filled container.
• Have signs or posters placed on and about the dumpster enclosure with pictures showing what a properly filled container and an over-filled container look like, and the cost for an over-filled container.
• Make sure the container is right-sized and the number of weekly pickups is correct.
• Will a recycling program work? Only if there is 100% cooperation by everyone at the location. In most instances, it will not work (at multiple tenant or owner locations, for example) because it only takes one misplaced piece of material to contaminate that entire container.

Trash will become an expensive program unless it is controlled and managed. Be sure to have properties inspected and have a management plan developed that will work at the location. Schedule maintenance and/or porter services to help monitor, and take action if fully warranted.