Garbage collection will go biweekly, regional council decides

Regional councillors have voted 12 to 1 in favour ofcollecting garbage every two weeks, with a four-bag limit per household.

Recycling and green bin pickup will stilltake place every week. The region estimates that biweekly collection will save about $1.5 million.

Cari Rastas-Howard,theproject manager ofwaste management programs for the Region of Waterloo, believes that biweekly collectionis more likely to encourage people to use their green bins.

"If you can only get rid of your garbage every two weeks, we hope that will encourage people to put all that smelly stuff in the green bin to get it taken away every week, as opposed to holding onto it," she said.

James Wolfe, who supports bi-weekly pickup, says, "I think it's a good idea, time has come. The city's growing, hopefully it will encourage them to use the recycle bins and green bins to keep that out of the regular stuff that is going to the landill."

The changes to pickup rules will not come into effect until2017.