CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The City of Corpus Christi is responding to a surprising video posted to social media showing the driver of a city recycling truck not only picking up the recycling bin but also the garbage bin in one trip.
It's something that proved to be upsetting to those who recycle. 3NEWS spoke with Corpus Christi Solid Waste Services Director David Lehfeldt, who said the driver was a floater assigned to help with the recycling routes.
On Thursday, he was on trash pickup, but on Friday, he was handling recyclables.
"He just messed up. One of those honest oh-no moments. He realized what he had done switched to the recycle and went on to collect the recycle," he said.
The video shows the driver going on to grab the blue can next and dumping it into the same truck, mixing the contents together. Lehfeldt said that while the contents were mixed, it doesn't mess up what's being collected.
"When it gets to the recycle facility they dump it on the floor and run it through the sorting process and at that point they remove that trash and all the trash put in it," he said.
In the last year, solid waste services has picked up a little over 10,500 tons of recyclable material, which is roughly 40 tons a day. When the recycling program first started, about 42 percent of what was collected was actually trash.
While it still happens, the amount of non-recyclables that end up being mixed in has been cut almost in half. He hopes the incident doesn't discourage others from doing their part to recycle.
"We will learn from our mistakes, going forward we will work to ensure it doesn't happen again. We do have a good recycling program, our recycling material is recycled, we've got a good recycling partner. They sort it for us and market it for us, and so we do collect and sell the recycles people put out there. It's not going to the landfill," he said.