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Residents press town and GFL Recycling over missed pickups, noise and contamination concerns
Summary
At the Jan. 7 Town of Nashville council meeting, GFL Recycling outlined how curbside materials are processed while residents described months-long missed pickups, early-morning route noise and overflow. Town staff and GFL agreed to follow up with targeted education, route checks and an offer to arrange facility tours.
Pat Lucey, government contracts manager for GFL Recycling, told the Town of Nashville council on Jan. 7 that the company collects curbside recycling in a multi-step process and transports sorted materials to a Sunoco recycling facility for further separation and sale.
"You hear rumors ... that everything goes into 1 big trash heap," Lucey said. "Our pick up of the recycling is actually a 3 step process ... recycling is on the left, trash is on the right." He said materials are hand-sorted and run through magnets and machines; some residual waste can bind up equipment or lead to processing fines.
The company acknowledged a recent residual rate of roughly 20–25 percent — material that Sunoco deems nonrecyclable — and said the facility’s target is 5 percent or less. "When we start getting up into the higher figures, that's when we can be docked by Sunoco," Lucey said.
Residents who spoke at the meeting said missed pickups, overflowing carts and early-morning truck routes have been persistent problems. Diane Hall, who lives in the Baker Street cul-de-sac, told councilors her recycle bin went uncollected for a month beginning in October 2024 and said the company told her an overhead cable line blocked truck access.
"I was informed that it was due to the cable line and that the company said it was too low for them to maneuver their truck to come up the street to enter the bins," Hall said. She asked the town to arrange a reliable contractor and to consider reimbursing residents for missed service.
Council members and GFL staff discussed short-term fixes and longer-term education. Lucey offered to provide a one-page guide for the town to include with a utility bill and to set up a tour for council members to view sorting at Sunoco and the local transfer station. Town staff said they would follow up with operations to see whether alternative trucks could serve narrow streets and to confirm whether cable repairs were performed.
Town staff also raised recurring complaints about trucks operating before the contract’s 6:30 a.m. start time. A council member said, "3 o'clock in the morning is a whole lot earlier than 6:30," and asked staff to press GFL to stop earlier runs and to coordinate a response when drivers cannot access a street.
Council and GFL also discussed overflow and cardboard pickup during peak seasons such as the holidays, and residents suggested temporary drop-off points at municipal facilities while cautioning about unmanned sites becoming informal dumping locations.
Randy (town staff) said the contract with GFL runs through September 2025 and promised to research neighborhood-specific complaints, loud early-morning routes and whether alternate trucks could be assigned to problem streets.
The council did not take formal action at the meeting. Staff said they would compile the addresses of missed pickups, confirm the cable-line status on Baker Street, follow up on the Golfers Lane complaints, and coordinate with GFL on educational materials and potential route adjustments.
