Changes could be coming to the city’s recycling and waste collection ahead of some provincial updates.
Ontario is overhauling the regulations around garbage and recycling, putting the responsibility on the producers of the items you buy to make sure they can be recycled. It is also requiring municipalities to start accepting more types of plastic and organic waste.
The city’s Solid Waste Manager Jason Sherband gave an update to city council last night on Thunder Bay’s solid waste strategy, saying our goals for this year include looking at how to accept food and organic waste.
“It’s not looking at it as just a stand-alone program. It’s going to affect how much garbage we collect at the curb, it’s going to affect, potentially, the gas system at the landfill. So it’s [about] how best do we integrate this into our whole integrated system,” he explains.
Green-bin organic waste programs have existed for years in many parts of southern Ontario.
Sherband also notes city officials will look at accepting more items as required in the province’s upcoming rules.
“There’s a lot of different avenues that we need to look at, but it’s really in its infancy stages right now, and we’ll go through that process and we’ll come up with a bunch of options that we can come back to council with, and we’ll go from there,” Sherband says.
He will come back to council with another update in the summer, including costs.
The financial aspect is on some councillors’ minds, as At-Large Councillor Rebecca Johnson shares her worries about how the city will pay to expand recycling and waste collection.
“I’m concerned that if we don’t start thinking about how this is going to hit us big time, is it something we should start putting money aside next year, for example, in our budget,” Johnson notes. “It’s going to be millions, it’s not going to be, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars here.”
