BELLEVUE, Wash. — As trash bins continue to overflow during the Republic Services strike, junk removal services are not letting this opportunity go to waste.
“Probably about five to six more calls a day than I normally have been receiving, which is great and it’s good for me and happy to help,” said Cameron Brulotte.
Brulotte is a supervisor with ‘Tired of Trash,’ a litter and junk removal company that services the Seattle and Bellevue areas.
He told KIRO 7 he’s been getting calls nonstop in Bellevue since the strike started and trash began piling up.
“They’re pretty upset because they don’t have anywhere to take the new garbage, so people have hired me to come take it,” Brulotte explained.
Brulotte says he’ll go to his clients and do the heavy lifting, so they can skip the long lines at the city’s trash drop off site.
“It’s about $50 a bin, as you can see, of an eight-foot bed pickup. The goal is to kind of sort the compost, recycling,” he added.
His hands and his truck have been full of excess garbage all week, but Brulotte says he stands in solidarity with the workers on strike.
“I don’t want to be on anyone’s toes. It’s obviously kind of just a weird time because you don’t want to get in the middle of anything. You just want to help people that need help right now,” Brulotte said.
Teamsters responded to the trash clearing tactic:
“We can appreciate the junk removal folks are thinking outside the box. At the end of the day, that is union work. It’s sad that that the company is holding out this long in the labor dispute.”
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