Region could be spending millions more on waste collection contract in 2026

A new waste collection contract has been in the works for the region for some time.

On May 7 the region’s waste management services will present their recommendations to council’s Planning and Works Committee on who should be awarded the $289,702,500 contract.

The contract doesn’t begin until March 2026, but the Director of Waste Management Services for the region, Jon Arsenault, said they need to get rolling with the contract now to get things implemented in time.

Part of that contract is to create a whole new fleet of collection trucks with automated arms, that also include greener systems.

“The fundamental change were looking at is we’re converting to automated cart collection, specifically for the garbage stream and the green bin stream,” said Arsenault.

Back in February 2023, staff received approval from council for levels of service and based on that, started collecting bids from contractors.

“A lot of the service providers in fact may not even consider bidding on some of the large contracts because the ability to have the manual side — it’s tough for them to retain staff so the automation is becoming more popular,” said Arsenault.

“We will have automated cart collection for garbage and green bin organics. In order to do that we have to have a rollout of quite an extensive cart process to all the households that are impacted and get carts to everyone. So everyone will have an individual cart for garbage, and an individual cart for green bin that are a little bigger than what you see today.”

The contract also includes a new four-day collection cycle from Tuesdays to Fridays and will use Mondays to work on trucks to avoid evening maintenance — reducing costs.

Arsenault said automated cart collection is becoming the new industry standard.

“The biggest issue for residents is instead of dragging bags of garbage to the curb or waste containers, you’ll be rolling a cart to the curb that has their garbage and the garbage container is equivalent to the three bag limit that we have now.”

The automated cart collection will be able to manoeuvre around parked cars and obstacles in its path, according to Arsenault.

It will make waste collection more efficient after they do some education with the community about the automation and how it works. Arsenault also argued that this system of collection is better from a health and safety perspective, aiding with pest issues that arise on collection days.