Houston recycling delays blamed on rodents, broken trucks, and outdated systems

Hassen revealed the dire state of the city’s recycling fleet. Of the 218 trucks needed, only a fraction are fully operational, and some are literally being eaten from the inside out.

“Believe it or not, we have a rodent problem,” he said. “When you don’t clean out your trucks, rodents come in and rats are chewing the wires. We have maggots in the back of our trucks. We have locations where raw sewage is coming up in the facilities that employees have to deal with.”