Public Works Director Jon Eppell
Homeowners in Tantramar are going to see changes in garbage collection beginning on February 1st under a new, five-year waste collection agreement that town council approved on Thursday.
Public Works Director Jon Eppell said that under the agreement, the Southeast Regional Service Commission will manage garbage collection on behalf of the municipalities in the region including Tantramar.
In his background report to council, Eppell noted that Tantramar inherited three separate waste collection contracts with varying terms and conditions when amalgamation took effect in January 2023 and with rising costs, it made sense for municipalities to agree to an integrated collection system overseen by the regional service commission.
He explained that the familiar three bag system will continue with clear garbage bags and blue recycling ones picked up on alternate weeks while the green bags containing organic waste will still be collected every week.
But he noted that the company that wins the waste collection contract will map out the routes, days and times.
“We are not saying that you have to collect Tantramar on particular days or that your route cannot span from Tantramar into Strait Shores,” Eppell told council.
“We’re allowing the service providers to optimize in the effort of trying to keep prices down.”
Advance notice
Eppell said Tantramar residents will be given plenty of advance notice about any changes in collection schedules once the routes are announced in September.
He added that under the new agreement, the spring and fall cleanup of bulkier items will be replaced by a new system allowing homeowners to put out one large, bulky item every two weeks with their clear bag garbage.
He noted that the bulky items will include Christmas trees.
The Southeast Regional Service Commission hasn’t announced the name of the company it has chosen to collect the trash, but Miller Waste Services and Fero Waste and Recycling are the only two that bid on the contract.
Eppell said the lack of a spring cleanup in Sackville could affect Mount Allison students in rented apartments who put out large amounts of garbage before moving when their school year ends in April.
“I think we will need to do some targeted communications with Mt. A., the students and with landlords because, at the end of the day, this is a landlord responsibility,” he told council.
He added that Tantramar will request that the mobile EcoDepot come to the Civic Centre in Sackville at the end of April so that students could take garbage there.
‘Good news’
Eppell predicted that the overall cost of municipal garbage collection will rise only slightly next year thanks to a subsidy the regional service commission receives from Circular Materials, the non-profit company that is now in charge of recycling paper, plastics and other packaging materials.
“That’s pretty good news,” he said given that the waste collection industry has been facing sharp increases in equipment, labour, borrowing and insurance costs in the last few years.
The Toronto-based Circular Materials was founded by 17 of Canada’s leading food, soft drink and consumer products makers as well as fast-food restaurants and grocery stores.
It oversees recycling programs in several provinces.
To read more about Circular Materials in New Brunswick, click here.
To read Jon Eppell’s background report to council, click here.
With the spring and fall clean up weeks being replaced by a ‘one bulky item every two weeks’ arrangement, I believe that we will see a mess left around town almost everywhere, especially during the spring time.
I can well imagine that upper Walker Road, upper Mt View Road and the upper portion of Fairfield Road, just to name a few areas, will once again become a dumping ground for getting rid of bulky items.
I think that our municipality is going to have to come up with a better arrangement than what has just been announced.
Why is something being changed that seemed to work so well?
Yes, the town should make a supplementary arrangement particularly in Sackville to accommodate the significant turnover of student tenants. And maybe at 1-2 other times of year — do the Christmas trees with their own forces, for example.
When they say “ Tantramar” do they mean all of Tantramar?
Bruce Wark responds: The answer is yes. The 4th paragraph in Jon Eppell’s report to council reads as follows: “The existing waste collection contracts expire January 31, 2025. SERSC is arranging for extension of Fero’s contract for the LSD areas to January 31, 2025. The intent is for SERSC to take over management of waste collection services and for the new waste collection contract to start February 1, 2025.”
I’m trying to understand the logic of bulky item collection at regular intervals rather than twice a year, as is done now. I can see it’s perhaps more manageable from the perspective of the waste collection company, but what about the customer (i.e. us)? Bulky items can be such things as couches, mattresses, and the like. Are we really expected to haul, say, a couch one week and two mattresses two weeks later? What happens when residents are moving and sorting and consigning many items at once to waste collection? And as others have pointed out, what about students at the end of each year? Graduating students especially may be leaving several bulky items – should they be divesting gradually over a period of weeks, at a time of year when pressures are already high (exams, etc.)?
We do our best to cooperate, but it does appear that not much thought has been given to the range of bulky items that may be at issue, or to the ease and feasibility of moving them over several weeks or months, especially for those of us for whom help will be needed to deal with very heavy items.
There is another aspect of the special bulk garbage collection for Spring & Fall cleanup that has been missed by this new arrangement. These town-wide cleanups are opportunities to focus on recycling. Many years we have put out bulk items and they are picked up before the contractor arrives. They get a new life in our community. If one item goes out every two weeks, this mass recycling opportunity will be lost.