Cape Coral growth motivating changes to trash pickup

Changes are coming to trash pickup in Cape Coral, because the city is growing so quickly. Some services are struggling to keep up because of all the construction, the traffic and the amount of people moving in.

Trash pickup is changing starting on Monday, as the pickup routes have become unbalanced and resources are being reallocated. To find out if your trash day is going to change, Cape Coral has created an interactive map: You can type in your address and see what day you’ll have to walk your trash can out to the street. You also should have received a postcard from Waste Pro if you’ll see a change.

But because of Cape Coral’s growth, from new homes to new businesses, all 80,000+ households could see some change in pickup time, so Waste Pro is asking you to get your bin out by 6 a.m. on your current trash day.

Lee County projects its population will reach 1 million by the year 2040, so Waste Pro is already getting ready for the next plan.

“The way that we have routed the city now… the northern sections which are now serviced on Thursdays and Fridays, those routes are designed to be smaller to handle the growth that we have projected coming in the next few years,” said Bill Jones, division manager of Lee County Waste Pro. “I’m sure that with the growth we’re seeing, there will be another potential reroute down the road, possibly three or four or five years down the road, but for the next few years we should be fine.”

Jones says it seems like every month 200 new homes are occupied, even with the pandemic.

“Over time, its routes have become unbalanced as a result of that growth, and historically the north part of Cape Coral has been less dense, so more geography for our trucks to cover but fewer homes to collect,” Jones said. “That’s changed over the past few years, to the point that the northern routes are now actually the largest routes in terms of house count and geography.”

Added customers means adding staff. Waste Pro is holding a job fair at its Fort Myers facilities on Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon. You do need a CDL license to drive for Waste Pro.