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City trashes five-day sanitation week

By: Staff Writer

Friday, Sep. 7, 2012 at 11:46 AM | Comments: 0

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The city will now pick up trash and recycling just four days a week. (CITY OF BRANDON)

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A calendar of the new collection days. (CITY OF BRANDON)

Brandon will see a slew of changes to trash and recycling pickup, starting Oct. 1.

The biggest change may be the move from a five-day cycle to a four-day cycle. Starting Tuesday, Oct. 1, city residents will see their trash or recycling bins picked up on the same weekday, every week, Tuesday through Friday.

Should a holiday fall on one of those days, crews will pick up their trash and recycling instead on Saturday — yes, Saturday.

"The huge advantage to going to a four-day collection cycle will be the fact that a resident’s pick-up day will only be minimally affected by long weekends and civic holidays," said Ian Broome, the city's public works director. "A four-day cycle is also advantageous to the city of Brandon because it means that Monday will now be a consistent maintenance day for our sanitation trucks."

The change also allows two extra collection days per year.

Only Christmas Day, New Year's Day and Remebrance Day will be swapped — Monday holidays like Labour Day will never be affected, and crews will apparently work through Good Friday.

Another change requires people who get their bins picked up from the back lane to bring them back onto their property — long a bone of contention in the city.

Residents will now have a 24-hour time limit to bring their bins back out of the lane, and they won't be able to put them out any sooner than 12 hours prior to collection day.

That matches what people with front-street pickup already do, Broome said.

"When carts are left in the laneway, empty or half-empty carts are often tipped by our Sanitation Department when they don’t need to be," he explained. "They are often contaminated by those who don’t know about or don’t follow the proper refuse and recycling disposal guidelines, and they can also fall victim to vandalism or damage."

He estimated that it costs the city about $75,000 a year to deal with those issues, which he said would also reduce back lane congestion and improve the overall look of the city.

People who fail to move their back-lane bins will be warned — but could face fines of up to $1,000.

The city does offer a set-out, set-back service, free of charge, to people who can supply an appropriate medical note indicating there is no one at their home able to do it.

The city is also planning to expand its organic compost program to 5,500 homes in spring, and a planned strategy for multi-family buildings should be presented to city council later this month.

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