More Long Beach residents report missed trash pickups; city says there's no citywide delay

More Long Beach residents and business owners are reporting problems getting their trash picked up after NBC Los Angeles first reported this week on neighbors who said their collections had been missed or delayed.

Since Thursday's report, dozens of people have contacted NBCLA describing similar experiences — some saying the problem has persisted far longer than a day.

The city maintains there is "no citywide collection delay" but acknowledges staffing shortages have resulted in intermittent missed collections across Long Beach.

Michael Gillespie, owner of The Merchant in Long Beach, said he initially thought the problems at his business were isolated.

“I honestly thought it was just us for the longest time, and apparently it’s a lot of people in Long Beach are dealing with the same problem,” Gillespie said.

He said when a trash pickup is missed, the trash can become so full that crews may not take it when they return.

“They come the next day, and the trash is overflowing, and then they’ll refuse to pick it up, and it’s like, it’s not our fault that it wasn’t picked up,” Gillespie said.

He said there have been times when he has ultimately had to handle the trash himself.

“It gets to the point where I got to load it all into my truck and take it to the dump because I can’t get the city to come pick it up,” Gillespie said. “And it’s frustrating.”

Gillespie said he considers trash collection a basic city service and believes officials need to find a solution when staffing problems interfere with collections.

“It’s not a good enough excuse to me,” Gillespie said. “Hire more people if you have to. I know we’re in a severe budget crisis."

“There’s got to be a solution. Find the solution,” he continued. “This is a simple service that needs to be provided to all the residents of Long Beach, and they’re dropping the ball.”

Organics left sitting in the summer heat

Long Beach resident Danica Sierra contacted NBCLA after seeing the first report. She said her organics collection had been missed for a week, leaving food and yard waste sitting outside in the summer heat.

“The natural order of organics is for it to decompose, not necessarily something you want to decompose in the bin while you’re waiting for somebody to pick it up,” Sierra said.

She said the organics bin began to “get kind of ripe,” particularly because it contained food.

Sierra brings some professional experience to the issue. She told NBCLA she worked in waste management for 16 years in sales and now works for a third party that contracts with waste companies to put together waste and recycling programs.

She said she understands that employees will inevitably miss work because of illness, vacations and other absences but believes collection systems should be prepared for that.

“There’s always going to be somebody that gets sick. There’s always going to be somebody on vacation,” Sierra said. “If there’s somebody on vacation, then there should be somebody there to cover."

Sierra acknowledged that missed routes may sometimes be recovered later in the day or the following day but said prolonged delays are different.

“For things to go weeks on end not to get recovered is pretty unacceptable,” she said. “Because you can’t just not have waste picked up, especially in the summertime, sitting out there.”

Sierra said she believes prolonged trash problems can also become a public health concern.

“If you don’t pick up the trash, it actually becomes a health issue too,” Sierra said. “Now it attracts rodents. Now it attracts vermin. It attracts all kinds of things.”

City cites staffing shortages

The city says its Collections Bureau currently has 114 budgeted and fully filled refuse operator positions providing daily refuse and organic collection service to approximately 118,000 accounts.

But despite having those positions filled, the city says the number of operators actually available to work has recently fallen significantly.

According to the city’s Energy and Environmental Services Department, the Collections Bureau has experienced an increase in work-related injuries among refuse operators, along with higher regular daily absences because of sickness or scheduled time off.

The city says that has at times created a 35% to 40% shortage in daily available refuse operator staffing over the past few weeks, resulting in what officials describe as “intermittent missed daily collections across the City.”

Despite those staffing challenges, the city says its missed daily collection rate is still below the industry average standard of 1%.

The Collections Bureau averages 68 collection routes each day for refuse and organic waste, operating six days a week from Monday through Saturday, according to the city.

Recently, the city says it has averaged four missed organic routes and one missed refuse route per day.

“When a refuse or organic collection route is not completed on its regularly scheduled day, the route is prioritized the following day for collection, typically in the mornings,” the city said.

Officials say the situation has “vastly improved over the past two weeks and is returning to prior service levels.”

The city also told NBCLA that its Collections Bureau “is not aware of any collection routes that are more than 1 day behind.”

That statement differs from the experiences described by some of the individual residents and business owners who contacted NBCLA, who say their own pickups have been missed for longer periods.

City recruiting additional operators

To address the recent shortage in available workers, the city says the Collections Bureau recently completed a recruitment for part-time refuse operators and is also recruiting for permanent, unbudgeted refuse operator positions.

The city says “normal service levels are expected to resume before the end of August 2026.”

NBCLA has asked the city for additional information about its use of part-time, temporary, contract or other supplemental workers, including how many are being used and how much the city has spent on supplemental staffing and overtime.

Residents who experience a missed pickup are asked to leave their bins out for service the following day.

The city says residents can report a missed collection online after 6 p.m. on their scheduled service day or call the Refuse Hotline at 562-570-2876.