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THUNDER BAY — Automated garbage collection will be a reality, for some residents, this fall.
Jason Sherband, manager of solid waste and recycling services, presented an update to city council at its May 5 meeting.
Coun. Michael Zussino asked for more details about the launch of the curbside collection programs.
Sherband informed council that a soft launch of the curbside garage cart collection program will start this fall for roughly 10,000 single-family households as the city rolls out a new fleet of side-loading trucks.
“There's been a lot of issues over the last year, supply chain issues in terms of the trucks all getting here, you know, when we first initial initially thought they would they would be here. They're starting to sort of trickle in, if you will, this year. Hence why we're going with a bit of a soft launch this fall, just because we won't necessarily have all the fleet in place,” Sherband told Newswatch in an interview.
He said the rest of the fleet will be ready for Spring 2026, and households across the city will have their new auto-carts, which are similar to the new recycling bins.
The garage bins will be “one size smaller” than the GFL recycling bins issued last year, said Sherband.
For the time being, there will be no change to how much garbage the city will collect each week.
“Whatever you would be putting out to the curb as garbage now, will continue to be put out as garbage with the launch of the garbage carts,” said Sherband.
However, once the city's provincially mandated organics program starts — which is expected to be in the fall of 2026 — the frequency of garbage pick-up will be decreased, every two weeks.
According to Sherband, roughly 43 per cent of household garbage is food and organic waste and residents should see their garbage decrease greatly in volume.
“When you've got the proper leaf and yard program and you've got the green bin program going and you're participating in recycling, the reality is there shouldn't be much garbage left,” said Sherband.
The organic waste program isn’t expected to launch until fall 2026, and Sherband said that is still a tentative date at this point.
He said a negotiated request for proposal for an organics processing facility is out, but he couldn’t provide details on an official start date or location when asked by Zussino.
“We've got a start date of the fall of 2026, subject to change based on once the RFP for processing closes, and we're able to sort that out with whoever the successful proponent is. Then we kind of work backwards from there,” said Sherband.
Sherband said once the organics program begins, organics collection will be done weekly, and garbage collection will be moved to “every other week.”
“The reality is that most communities move to every other week garbage collection. The ones that have kept it to weekly, so we kept garbage and organics weekly, typically struggle,” said Sherband.
