OS City Hall. Photo by Jill Charlebois
Green bins are coming to Owen Sound.
City council approved a staff recommendation at a special meeting Monday afternoon to award a new eight-year waste management contract to Miller Waste Systems, effective June 1, 2025.
The big change in the city’s waste management service as of next June will be a new weekly, curbside pick-up program for source separated organics. That would allow people to place their fruit, vegetable, meat and other organic wastes into a green bin for curbside collection.
Eligible households would be supplied a green bin and a kitchen catcher for the new source-separated organics program.
But not all households in Owen Sound will be eligible for the new green bin service. It will not be offered at apartment buildings or other multi-unit residences without direct access to the street or curb, or in the River District (downtown core).
“There’s about 9,100 households in the city of Owen Sound, and the program will be rolled out to around 7,800,” Owen Sound’s Manager of Engineering Services Chris Webb says.
Bi-weekly garbage collection would be maintained in the new waste contract.
A report by Owen Sound’s Manager of Corporate Services Bradey Carbert says the annual cost of the new contract will be $1.35-million, an increase of about $327,000 from the current program.
The bid from Miller Waste Systems was the lowest of three the city received.
Garbage collection would cost around $692,000 in Year 1 of the contract and the new source-separated organics service would be just over $618,000. Changes in Ontario’s blue box collection system to move recycling costs from municipalities to producers helped lower the total cost of the city’s new waste contract by about $350,000 annually.
“The transition of blue box costs to producers gives us the opportunity now to get in,” Owen Sound Mayor Ian Boddy says of the new green bin program.
Owen Sound’s waste management request for proposals did not consider other potential curbside service enhancements, such as seasonal yard waste pick-up.
