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Waste Management achievement in GTA 5

Waste Management

Purchase the old dock and collect all nuclear waste.

Waste Management0
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How to unlock the Waste Management achievement

  • General ArcaneGeneral Arcane
    19 Dec 2014 18 Dec 2014 30 Dec 2014
    This is probably the second most irritating collectables achievement in GTA V, second only to the Stunt Jumps.

    There are a total of 30 barrels of nuclear waste to collect. First, you must buy the old dock. This can be found about three-quarters up the west of the map, and will be marked with a icon indicating it is for sale. It can be bought by any of the protagonists. You must have completed the Merryweather Heist main story mission before being able to buy it, and it costs $250,000. You will make this money back simply by collecting the barrels (you get $23,000 for each one you collect).

    A submarine spawns at the end of the dock. Get in it, and you will get a brief tutorial on how to use it. Very usefully, you will have an app on your in-game phone that broadcasts each of the barrel's locations when you get near them. Thus; you don't need to be able to see the barrels to know where to find them.

    I would suggest starting by heading north from the docks, going along the top of the map, then down the east side, and finish just to the south-east of Los Santos, then leave the sub, and get a taxi back to the docks, before heading down the west side. This seemed to me to be the most efficient way of doing it. They tend to appear in clusters, so chances are, if you've found one, you'll find a few more.

    A couple can be found close to crush depth (492ft). If you go much deeper than this, the submarine will implode and the protagonist will die. Be careful about damaging the sub. As the first video below shows, you can break the sub if you are careless with controlling it, once again, killing the protagonist. If that does happen, I suggest getting a cargobob, and carrying the submarine that way; it saves you a lot of time.

    If you're having trouble picking some of the nuclear waste up, Milki Tea suggests trying this:
    would just like to add some info on a texture problem that prevents you obtaining some nuclear waste. the Coral on seafloor spawns randomly when you load game up, sometimes it loads ontop of nuclear waste and you cant get to it. simply do a quick save and load game up again until coral is clear of the waste can if you encounter this as i did.
    The videos below show you the location of each nuclear waste barrel. They were found on the Xbox 360 version of the game, but the locations are the same on the Xbox One.

    Additionally, the Xbox 360 version had a feature that told you how far away depth-wise you were from the nuclear waste. This feature is missing from the Xbox One version of the game. The videos should give you a guide of how deep you should go to find the next barrel.

    Guide not helping? View 2 more guides for this achievement.

    Showing most recent comments. View all comments.
    IAmSAMU3LxI recommend quick saving on your phone before you get the last barrel. I had to collect all 30 twice but I saved before the final one this time. I had to reload the save about 8 times and quit the game and go back on it before the achievement popped.
    Posted by IAmSAMU3Lx on 17 Oct 22 at 21:20
    minisim24This had glitched for me before and I had to start a brand new playthrough to fix it. Ouch. Bought it with Franklin as soon as I could and never went to the dock with Michael. Did it in two halves, stopping at the east of the docks then going down again towards the pier. Took a couple of moments to pop but I could see the tracker working again so I knew it had gone. Phew! Glad to have this one done finally
    Posted by minisim24 on 14 Aug 23 at 15:11
    DubstepEdgelordMine glitched at 90% so I reloaded a save where i had 1 left and got it again and still no progress, but it popped on a hard reset.
    Posted by DubstepEdgelord on 20 Jan at 07:39
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  • BabyishDuckBabyishDuck
    21 Oct 2015 17 Mar 2020 17 Mar 2020
    A Guide on where to find all the Nuclear Waste in GTA V. By the end of the story you’ll have earned more than enough money to buy the Sonar Docks business on Paleto Bay.

    Collecting the Nuclear Waste isn’t too difficult as you can just follow the Trackify App on your phone.

    If you're having trouble, feel free to use this video I made as a reference.

    GTA V Waste Management Achievement Guide

    Here are the time stamps for all the Nuclear Waste:

    00:05
    00:31
    00:49
    01:11
    01:29
    01:48
    02:08
    02:28
    02:52
    03:12
    03:38
    03:54
    04:13
    04:34
    04:53
    05:12
    05:33
    05:51
    06:15
    06:36
    07:05
    07:26
    07:45
    08:01
    08:18
    08:42
    08:58
    09:17
    09:39
    10:04

    Hope this helped, thanks again.
    Showing both comments.
    Fa3edLong as hell
    Posted by Fa3ed#5722 on 15 Oct 21 at 03:00
    LERISBILLSALOVEFYI: Positively NOT talk to the woman at the dock if your playing as Michael because this will trigger a strangers and freaks mission where you need to collect 30 submarine missing parts and if that happens the sub parts will mess up your waste barrels count and might get you stuck at 96 or 93% after you collect the final waste barrel even if you didn't pick any sub parts. So to avoid frustration and spare yourself collecting all 30 barrels a 2nd time on a new save slot DO NOT TALK TO THE WOMAN AT THE PIER, at least until you finish collecting the 30 waste barrels.

    The 1st time I tried this achievement I did it as Michael and I had collected a few barrels when I saw the icon for this side mission so I triggered it. My tracker was at 45% and after picking the 1st sub part my tracker stopped moving so no matter how many more waste barrels I picked from that point on it wouldn't move at all. After collecting all 30 barrels the tracker was still stuck at 45% so I figured I had to collect the sub parts as well in order to unstuck it and unlock my achievement. So after picking another sub part the tracker leaped from 45% to 96% but even after collecting all 30 missing parts, talking to the woman after collecting them and completing the side mission the tracker was still stuck at 96%. I tried logging back out and in again, restarting my xbox, hard resetting it but none of that worked.

    I had to re-collect all 30 barrels again in a different save file, luckily I had a backup one with the story missions completed and $30.000.000+ from the last heist so I could afford the dock and retry this achievement. This time around I bought the dock as Franklin and collected all 30 barrels with him and the achievement unlocked normally after I picked the 30th one. I hope you find this information helpful.
    Posted by LERISBILLSALOVE on 26 Dec 21 at 18:20
  • HngmnDesmondHngmnDesmond
    30 Jan 2024 30 Jan 2024 30 Jan 2024
    The only thing I have to say about this achievements is: put on some music or podcasts while you're collecting the nuclear waste, because it will take some time and is pretty straightforward, so you should have no problem with this.

    A única coisa que eu tenho a dizer sobre essa conquista é: escute algumas músicas ou podcasts enquanto coleta o lixo nuclear, porque vai levar um tempo e é bem direto, então você não deve ter problemas com esse.
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