Barrie’s trash talk has messages that are just around the curbside collection corner.
Beginning May 1, many collection days for garbage and organics will shift, pet waste goes in the green bin, yard waste day lasts as long as a week and the city is getting out of the recyclables game.
“I have been asked why change? Why are we changing a lot of things with this contract,” said Stephanie Mack, the city’s associate director of waste management and environmental sustainability. “I can tell you that for us it is preparing for a changing community, a changing city.
“We are preparing for growth,” she added. “We are aligning with provincial changes, changes within the waste sector also, but most importantly committing to looking after this asset, our landfill, and just ensuring we have capacity here into the future.”
Mack was at Barrie Landfill on Monday morning to introduce Emterra, which has a new curbside collection contract with the city as of May 1.
“As a company, we will do our utmost to ensure that our services are delivered efficiently, safely and consistently every single day,” said Paulina Leung of Emterra. “Today, as we celebrate Earth Day, we’re also recognizing the tangible ways that this new contract will help the community continue to divert more material from the landfill through the green-bin organics program, to the yard waste collection program.”
Changes to collection will affect about 58,000 single- and multi-family residences and approximately 4,000 commercial units in Barrie, which are eligible for waste services.
Mack has said Barrie is going to have a new waste collection schedule that will affect about 10,000 properties.
Check your schedule (Barrie.ca/
“With the shift in schedule, there will be some households that will miss a curbside collection,” Mack said. “And so we have offered this … to compensate for that.”
The special collection day, on May 3, will see about 7,000 city households get garbage and organics pickup, to bridge the scheduling and routes gap.
Impacted residents in Wards 3, 5, 7, 8 and 9 will receive a letter from the city regarding May 3. The letters have already gone out.
Mack said it’s understood that people will have to make adjustments.
“Residents become accustomed to the same day and the same time for collection, so we anticipate that it might take a few weeks for the community to become accustomed to the new schedule,” she said. “But it won’t take long. We’re getting a lot of messages out and we’ve had lots of interest and lots of folks checking their schedule online.”
Mack noted the new leaf and yard waste schedule works on a community model that has worked well in other municipalities.
“I know waste collection changes are hard, but I do believe that this is going to bring a better collection, more consistent collection this fall, when we see our volumes go up,” she said of leaf and yard waste.
These changes begin when the existing waste collections contract with Waste Connections expires April 30, 2024, and the new contract with the Emterra Group begins the next day, May 1 — an eight-year deal with options for two one-year extensions.
Barrie’s new collection contract will use manual collection from May 1, 2024 until Sept. 7, 2025. The next day, Barrie will make the transition to automated collection, with the use of carts or bins for all materials except yard waste. The carts will be provided to residents.
Yard waste goes to the curb on Monday of the collection week that lasts until Friday, with pick-up every other week, April to November.
Barrie’s recycling program is also changing, starting May 1, 2024. On that date, residential recycling — blue and grey boxes — will no longer be collected by the city.
A not-for-profit organization called Circular Materials will be financially responsible for collecting and managing residential recycling in Barrie. There are no anticipated changes to the materials residents can recycle — so still paper and containers.
Emterra has also been contracted by Circular Materials to collect residential recycling materials. They are to be collected the same day as garbage and organics.
This change comes as part of a provincial regulation whereby all Ontario municipalities are transitioning to a producer responsibility model. Companies, or producers, which supply recyclable materials will be responsible for the collection and recycling of these materials.
Other changes, which take effect May 1, are there will be no shift in collection due to holidays, except Christmas and New Year’s Day.
Also as of May 1 pet waste, including plant based kitty litter, can be put into green bins. Mack has said curbside garbage is 18 per cent pet waste and the city can save 3,600 tons of pet waste at the landfill every year.
Curbside collection will be expanded to eligible private roadways and laneways. The city is working to assess eligible properties. This service will be phased in, and the city will contact eligible property managers after May, 2024.
Unspecified changes are also coming to the collection schedule and frequency for multi-residential buildings of six units or more.
For residents in the Downtown BIA (Business Improvement Area), there will be daily (Monday to Friday) collection of garbage and organics, with no change to weekly limits in this area. BIA residential recycling will be collected by Circular Materials on Tuesdays.
Barrie businesses/institutions must register to receive the current level of curbside waste collection service from the city, with the introduction of a new waste collection contract on May 1. This intake will continue until the change to carts in September 2025.
These changes come with a cost. Barrie’s solid waste collection costs were projected in 2023 to more than double during the next five years. The forecast is costs rising from $6 million last year to $13.57 million in 2027 for collecting garbage, organics, recycling, yard waste and batteries.
These changes all stem from provincial programs. In June 2016, the province enacted its Resource Recovery and Circular Economy Act (RRCEA), which required the development of a strategy for a waste-free Ontario.
