Recycling Issues

[danbrotherston]

Big changes coming to garbage collection in Waterloo Region

Beginning in March 2026, garbage and waste from the green bin will be collected at the curb with automated carts, said Olivia Kwok, a waste management supervisor at the Region of Waterloo.

“Residents will roll out garbage and organic carts to the curb where they set their waste now and then instead of a staff member manually by hand, lifting the materials and putting it in the truck, a robotic or mechanical arm will lift and empty the cart contents into the truck,” Kwok said in an interview Tuesday.

This is separate from recycling, which will be no longer the Region's remit by then.

FWIW...the Netherlands (or at least Rova, which collects waste where I live) does this for most items.

We have a "PMW" bin for plastics, metal, and "drankenkartons" (like wax lined tetrapack), a green bin for food and yard waste, and a blue bin for paper and cardboard.

Those are collected monthly (or bi-weekly for green bin). They are pretty large so this is only a problem if you're moving in and have tons of cardboard. And bins must be rolled to a position that is accessible by the collection truck, sometimes this is the end of the block since our roads are small.

For everything else which is literally referred to as "remainder" we have an underground receptacle at the end of the block with card access. It's kind of strange to have "remainder" and recycling collected differently.

There are also collection bins around the city for glass (sorted by color), textiles, and a depot for hazardous household wastes.

But it's also common in other parts of Ontario. My parents had this bin system in St. Marys for recycling and garbage. Seems like an obvious way to reduce costs (and some of our trucks are even electric).

Again, it's weird to have both a centralized bin for collection (for garbage) and also individual container collection (for recycling and green bin), but I think the centralized collection doesn't scale well to many types of sorted containers. Requiring bins to be moved to an accessible location is a reasonable efficiency improvement as well as a way of removing the "this road must be wide enough for a garbage truck" justification for dangerous roads.