City of Ottawa committee approves new garbage plan for 4-day collection week, use of private landfills

The city of Ottawa's environment and climate change committee has approved a plan to drop Fridays as a waste collection day, stop accepting leaf and yard waste in the green bin, and send some garbage to private landfills.

If your garbage day is normally Friday, it could change to another day of the week in a couple of years.

The city of Ottawa's environment and climate change committee has approved a plan to drop Fridays as a waste collection day.

Instead, workers will pull longer hours Monday to Thursday. Staff say this would eliminate the need for residents to set out waste for collection on weekends following a statutory holiday.

"It's more efficient to collect four days across the city of Ottawa. We'll use Fridays for those opportunities when there's a stat holiday where collection is postponed one day," said Coun. Riley Brockington.

While the shifts for the garbage collection workers would be longer, Brockington says the city believes the change would not impact the actual collection hours each day, so there wouldn't be garbage trucks running late into the evening.

The city will also cease taking leaf and yard waste in the green bin.

If approved by council, the changes would not come into effect until March 2026. Residents will be informed of their new pickup dates before the changes come into effect.