The City of Homewood has long been proud of picking up its own garbage, but today the city officially started a contract with Amwaste for a more automated system.

For decades, as garbage collection across the nation has become more automated, Homewood remained rare among municipalities as it continued a tradition of “backdoor pickup,” a labor-intensive system run by city workers.

Instead of rolling their garbage cans out to the curbs, Homewood residents could leave trash cans right outside their homes. On garbage pickup days, crews would walk or jog onto private property, retrieve the cans, empty them in a city-owned truck, and return the trash cans. The work was especially demanding in hot summer weather. As the bin filled, city workers would hit a lever on the side of the truck to bring down a packer, squishing and compacting the bags and usually releasing more stench from the already stinky garbage.

Who wants that job? Not enough people, as it turned out.

In 2004, Homewood considered dropping that system that required 35 full-time employees, but residents lobbied and it was dropped.

The pandemic exposed the labor shortage and costs, as trash crew members quit, and the city in July recommended finally making the switch to contracting with a waste disposal company.

“We haven’t been able to find or retain employees in our garbage service,” Homewood Council member Barry Smith said at the July 17 council meeting. “At this point we’re down 11 employees. By the end of this week, we’ll be down 13. We have a lot of our street employees having to work toward running trash routes so that the trash can get picked up.”

Homewood had been spending $3.1 million for garbage pickup running its own service and will save money by contracting with Amwaste for $1.57 million, said City Council member Walter Jones.

No Homewood Sanitation Department employees will lose their jobs, Homewood Mayor Patrick McClusky said. The city’s garbage pickup crews will be offered jobs in the streets department, he said.

“The factors driving us to this point range from short staffing to the growing cost of the sorting of our recycling,” McClusky said in a letter to residents. “Other Over The Mountain communities have been facing this very same issue, and have made the switch. At the end of the day, be assured that we believe we have made the best decision for the City of Homewood. That also includes doing what is best for our staff. These guys have worked long hours in the elements to keep our city clean and we remain extremely grateful to them. I know you all share the same feelings.”

Backdoor pick-up will still be offered to those residents over 65 years of age, and anyone with a disability, the city said.

Residents will be required to have a 95-gallon cart and are limited to two carts at the curb. The city recommends purchasing a 95-gallon cart at Ace Hardware, Lowes or Home Depot, but they are also available from Amwaste.

Trash pickup will still be four days a week, with the same Monday-and-Thursday or Tuesday-and-Friday routes. Recycling and garbage can be mixed in the same can for Monday and Tuesday routes, so recycling will be picked up weekly. The recycling will be taken to RePower in Montgomery where it will be sorted along with the garbage.

Homewood Streets and Sanitation Director Berkley Squires said in a July 10 finance committee meeting that the new system will also improve recycling, which currently has a high spoilage rate.

“You can put your recycle, your grass clippings, your household garbage, whatever it is, all goes in there,” Squires said. “That is transported down to a substation in Clanton and then taken to Repower in Montgomery. They recycle 92 percent of what’s in that can.”

About 38 percent of what people have been putting in recycling was not fit for recycling and ended up in a landfill, city officials say. Glass is not allowed as a recycling material. “Nobody takes it anymore,” Squires said.

City officials visited the Repower operation as part of the research on making the change, he said.

“They have an automation system, and it separates plastics, aluminums, food, everything,” Squires said.

Council member John Hardin said the main concern he’s heard about the change is for the garbage pickup employees, who are familiar faces to residents.

“These have become friends of theirs,” Hardin said of the relationship of residents to city employees who picked up garbage. “You see them every time, give them water, do nice things for them, because they’ve done a great job for us.”