Moncton changes rules for bulk garbage collection

Moncton's new bulk waste collection program comes into effect next week, giving residents 10opportunities a year to get rid of large items instead of one spring garbage pickup.

Residents will be able to have large items collected on a rotating schedule of five zones in the city. Pickup has to be prearranged and only four items will be collected at a time.

Moncton city councillor Daniel Bourgeois says the arrangement leaves plenty of questions.

"If I'm renovating my basement and tearing down the wall and there's 14 two-by-fours, last May I could put all 14 two-by-fours at the curb and they would be picked up," he said. "But now you have a limit of four items do I bundle them up?"

Mayor George LeBlanc questioned the timing for starting the program.

"We're dealing with so much snow here we can hardly get around," he said. "Why wouldn't we just put it off for a month or so until we get rid of all this heavy snow?"

Michael Cooke is with GFL, the company contracted to do the collections, and says a similar program has been successful in Saint John. He says it works better than a once a year pickup.

"When you do a forced cleanup in May we have to bring resources and assets from away," he explained. "We have to put them up overnight in hotels and feed them and it creates a much higher cost of doing it during that period than doing it once a month."

A website has been set up to help people understand the new rules.

Mayor LeBlanc says the city will have to work on making the new program more easily understood.