Around 120,000 green bins will be delivered to residents in London, Ont., starting Monday.
The City of London’s Green Bin program will officially begin the week of Jan. 15, 2024, and the city is delivering the bins to Londoners from now until mid-December.
The green bins will come with a kitchen container, a pickup calendar and a guide on the program with new collection dates.
The kitchen container is designed for convenience, to collect food scraps and organic waste which then get dumped into the green bin.
The green bins are to be placed out at the curb alongside garbage and recycling containers on collection day.
The City says using green bins will help reduce greenhouse gasses, turn waste into a new resource that feeds local farms and soils, and extend the life of landfills by keeping organic materials out.
Starting Jan. 15, 2024, green bins and recycling will be picked up at the curb every week while garbage will be picked up at the curb every other week.
This means Londoners will be holding onto garbage for four to six additional days compared to the current system.
The collection day will remain on the same day each week between statutory holidays. Every statutory holiday, the schedule will move forward one day, meaning collection day will change about 10 times a year.
Yard waste collection will still occur every five weeks during the spring and summer and every two to three weeks in the fall.
The green bin program, marking the most significant change to waste collection in more than 25 years in London, was approved earlier this year.
The introduction of green bins has been a decade-long process in London, as a pilot project ran for a year in 2011.
– with files from 980 CFPL’s Amy Simon and Marshall Healey