Before the end of 2023, residents in London, Ont., will finally have a curbside collection calendar with garbage and recycling collected on a consistent day of the week.
Also down the line is the long-awaited arrival of London’s own green bin composting program.
They’re among several changes being planned by city staff, as outlined in a report going before city council’s Civic Works Committee (CWC) on Tuesday.
The changes stem from the Ontario government’s move toward standardized recycling programs across the province.
The province’s recycling updates will see the costs of recycling program shifted from being split between municipalities and waste producers to instead being mostly paid for by those producers. Producers would also take on the responsibility of collecting and processing most of the recycling in the city. While this transition is set to begin on July 1, changes to London’s curbside waste collection system won’t happen until a few months later
In their report to the CWC, city staff write: “preliminary estimates suggest that between $500,000 and eventually more than $4 million per year (in 2026) will be saved” in taxpayer money.
“The actual amount will be determined in the negotiations with industry (e.g., what happens with existing contracts, how will costs be paid, how will non-eligible materials be handled, etc.).”
Falling in line with standardized recycling programs across the province requires an overhaul of the way London collects and processes waste.
This is set to coincide with the repeatedly-delayed start of London’s green bin program, which Jay Stanford, the city’s director of climate change, environment and waste management, expects will begin in late 2023.
The green bin program’s launch was put on hold last year when supply chain issues stalled the delivery of necessary collection trucks. The city has ordered 26 of the trucks with delivery dates already confirmed for half of them this year, but Stanford says they’re now just waiting to confirm the arrival dates for the final 13 trucks.
The overhauled curbside collection system being proposed will see recycling bins and green bins collected on a weekly basis, while garbage will be collected every two weeks.
Stanford expects some residents may have concerns about garbage collection only occurring once every two weeks, but says other cities, such as Toronto and Ottawa, have made it work.
“Initially you think — I can’t hold garbage that long — but when the smelly portion is picked up every week (through green bins), you quickly realize it is a manageable system,” Stanford said.
“This is the environmental thing that we need to do, the improvements that are required, not only from a climate change perspective, but also just from our responsibility with the materials that we handle.”
Mayor Josh Morgan, who sits on the CWC and will be among the councillors receiving the report on Tuesday, says curbside collection has been a longstanding issue for Londoners.
With two terms as a councillor under his belt, Morgan says he often hears constituents frustrated by London’s current curbside collection calendar, which varies from neighbourhood to neighbourhood and often sees garbage and recycling collection change days each week.
“I’ve been a victim of this myself, in fact, I’ve caused frustration for my whole street. One time, I got the day wrong, I put out my garbage, and everybody thought because I was the councillor I knew what I was doing and everybody else put their garbage out and indeed it was the wrong day,” Morgan said.
“It has saved us a lot of money to do it the way that we’ve been doing it, but with the transition to the new recycling system, the new green bin system, the time has come for us to have same-day garbage and recycling collection.”