Roswell to spend $285K on semi-automated trash cans

A City Council agenda page depicts the trash containers Roswell will acquire for a pilot program for semi-automated curbside garbage collection. CITY OF ROSWELL

A City Council agenda page depicts the trash containers Roswell will acquire for a pilot program for semi-automated curbside garbage collection. CITY OF ROSWELL

The Roswell City Council has approved buying 4,000 trash containers, at a cost of $285,872, for households that will participate in a pilot program for semi-automated curbside garbage collection.

“We’re really excited to get this pilot program under way and see if we can get semi-automated refuse collection tested and verified,” Daniel Skalsky, Roswell’s environmental/public works director, told the council. “Hopefully, this will work throughout the city.”

The containers will be provided by Wastequip/Toter and will be the first of 25,000 eventually, Skalsky said. The new containers will be distributed in four parts of the city. Residents on pilot program routes will be notified.

Most communities have already adopted semi-automated trash collection, Skalsky said. It may or may not be faster, he said, but for sanitation workers, it means less of the stress that can lead to workers compensation claims.