Due to severe weather conditions, all Penn Waste operations will be operating on a two-hour delay on Wednesday to ensure the safety of our dedicated team members.
Furthermore, as a result of the closure on Tuesday caused by inclement weather, our collection schedule for the remainder of this week will experience a one-day delay. Please note the following adjustments:
Tuesday customers will now be serviced on Wednesday
Wednesday customers will now be serviced on Thursday
Subsequent days will follow suit, with collection extending until Saturday
We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. At Penn Waste, the well-being our dedicated crews is our utmost priority.
We appreciate your understanding and cooperation during this time.
It’s that time of year again – cutting plants back, raking up leaves, and trimming your hedges one last time this season! We compiled a list of tips for you to keep in mind when preparing your yard waste to ensure it gets collected and disposed of properly.
No Plastic Bags – Do not place plastic bags INSIDE of your yard waste containers or brown paper yard waste bags. All yard waste trimmings should be placed loosely into these containers.
Container / Yard Waste Bag Weights – Please be mindful of how heavy the container is when placing yard waste into your containers and brown paper yard waste bags. When you smash down trimmings it can become severely compacted. This makes it difficult for our employees to lift the bags and containers. This may result in material getting stuck in the bottom of the yard waste containers. If you have to drag your containers and bags to the curb, they’re too heavy.
Bundles of Trimmings – Bundles of tree and bush trimmings should be no longer than 4 feet in length, no wider than a basketball, and branches may not exceed 6 inches in diameter. Bundles should also not weigh more than 30 pounds each. This ensures our employees can safely collect the material and it fits in our trucks. You can use any type of biodegradable twine to bundle your trimmings.
Thorns – Be mindful of any trimmings that have thorns on them. Please give our team members an easy and safe way to handle this material as thorn bushes are a major safety hazard for our employees. We encourage you not to bundle these items, but to place them inside of brown paper yard waste bags or to use a yard waste container so our employees have a safe way to pick them up and dump them in to the truck.
Leaves – Check with your local municipality to see if leaves are accepted as part of your yard waste collection. Some municipalities allow them and some do not.
Grass Clippings, Dirt, Stones, Tree Stumps, and Fruits & Vegetables – As always, the previously mentioned items should NOT be placed out for yard waste collection.
It is important to keep safety in mind when handling hot ashes from wood stoves, fireplaces and fire pits. Hot ashes can cause major safety issues for not only you, but for our employees as well.
Hot ashes and coals from fires can remain hot enough to start fires for many hours or even days after a fire is out. The amount of time it takes for hot ashes to cool depends on many factors, some of which include how hot the fire was, what was burning, how much unburned fuel remains if fuel was used, etc. Please keep all of these factors in mind when disposing of hot ashes.
In order to properly dispose of the hot ashes, here are some tips to keep in mind:
If possible, allow ashes to cool in the area where you had the fire for several days. These areas are designed to contain their heat safely.
When it is time to dispose of ashes, test to ensure the hot ashes are cool by placing them in a cardboard box or paper bag before disposal. In this situation, never leave these ashes unattended until they are cool enough for disposal. If the ashes are too hot, they will begin to burn through the box or bag.
Transfer the cool ash to a plastic bag and then tie it shut. This will ensure any dust from the bagged ashes does not get into our employees’ eyes or lungs.
Do NOT put any ashes in a trash container. They should be left on the ground beside your trash container. By sitting them outside of the cart, we can confirm the ashes are NOT hot before placing them in the truck.
NEVER dispose of hot ashes with yard waste material. By placing ashes with yard waste, such as tree trimmings and leaves, the potential for fires increase substantially
Monday, October 14, 2019 – All Penn Waste routes will be operating on schedule on the Columbus Day Holiday. Please place your waste and recycling curbside on your regularly scheduled collection day.
Toilets may not be something you initially think of as being a safety hazard to our team members but they are when not placed at the curb properly! In the last few weeks, we’ve seen an influx of cracked or broken toilets being placed curbside. They are collected as trash but we would like to encourage all of our residents to either place them out in two pieces (as shown in the photo below) or sit the cracked pieces out separately. Please do not place any cracked pieces back together so the toilet is sitting curbside looking as if it is not broken. Toilets should be placed curbside in two pieces when disposing of them – the tank and the seat should be taken apart.
We’ve had multiple instances where our team members pick up a toilet and the cracked, porcelain pieces fall apart as they are loading it into the truck. Broken porcelain is extremely sharp and toilets are dirty. These incidents have resulted in lacerations to our team members legs requiring stitches.
As always, thanks for helping us keep our team members safe!
Penn Waste would like to issue a reminder to residents in south central Pennsylvania that pool chemicals should NOT be disposed of in your curbside trash and recycling bins. Pool chemicals are considered hazardous waste and need to be disposed of properly. Scroll down to learn more.
The Problem
As noted by the EPA, pool chemicals are hazardous because when they mix with a small quantity of water or are improperly mixed, such as with other chemicals or reactive materials, they can ignite causing fires. They can also cause skin irritation and release toxic vapors.
Many pool chemicals are highly reactive and capable of generating high temperatures which will start fires. Reactivity may be triggered by water wetting the chemical or by the inadvertent mixing of pool chemicals with an incompatible material.
When pool chemicals are disposed of in the trash or recycling, there is a high risk of them reacting because they will come in contact with other liquids in our trucks. Rain, high humidity, and other general liquids disposed of in your trash and recycling can cause the pool chemicals to react when they get collected by our truck resulting in a truck fire (as seen in the above photo).
The Solution
Do not place pool chemicals in your trash and recycling! Here are several options for getting rid of pool chemicals:
Take them to a facility that handles hazardous waste. Make sure you check with your local solid waste authority to see if they accept pool chemicals prior to arriving.
