New Castle County residents will see an electric trash truck picking up the garbage in neighborhoods.
Evergreen Waste Services in New Castle unveiled the new trash truck as well as two charging stations on its property.
They hope to add four more electric trash trucks by the end of the year as well as three more charging stations by the end of the year or early next year.
Evergreen Waste Services owner Marcus Stevens explains how the truck can be used.
"So, this truck can go out and can pick up 600 stops in a day. It can come back and then whatever is left on the batteries can be sent back to the grid, and that was one of the beautiful things about going this direction," said Stevens.
DNREC Division of Air Quality director Angela Marconi says a change like this is helpful to the air.
"Transportation emissions contribute a lot of our ozone emissions that create ozone in Delaware as well as particulate matter and greenhouse gas emissions,” said Marconi. “So, making the change to the fleet helps to address those issues."
Purchasing the truck was helped along by $1.53 million from DNREC’s Environmental Mitigation Trust.
"We have 50 trucks in service, five of them so 10% of our fleet will be EV, and these will be servicing the residents of New Castle County. So we'll be in the neighborhoods and we'll be passing kids on the street. This truck is quiet, and there is zero emissions. This is 100% electric," said Stevens.
He adds that his property has the infrastructure to have 10 charging stations in total which accommodate 20 trucks.
