After the holidays this year, the City will not be providing curbside pickup of your old Christmas tree. This is one of a number of changes to the City’s waste management program for the new year.
Throughout January, from Monday to Saturday, residents can drop off their tree at Transco Waste and Recycling Centre, 387 Macgregor Sideroad, free of charge. “It’s actually an expanded window for them to get rid of their tree,” says Steve Henschel, Communications Manager for the City.
He explains that those who cannot get their tree to the drop-off site “can hold on to it and put it out with brush collection in the spring."
This change was adopted by Council as part of their Waste Master Plan approved at their November 18 meeting. Christmas tree collection costs approximately $34,000 and it was an underutilized service. The City estimates that they collected only around 1,000 trees last year which means it cost around $34 per tree.
Other changes to the waste collection program include transitioning curbside yard waste collection to a bi-weekly schedule in alternating zones between April and December.
The Waste Master Plan seeks to optimize collection routes to improve efficiency and reduce instances of delays. This means that some residents may see their collection day and zone change starting January 6.
Residents can now visit www.sarnia.ca/CollectionDays to enter their address and check their new collection day / zone. More information on the changes to waste collection can be found at www.sarnia.ca/2025WasteFAQ.
The changes in days and zones will apply to recycling collection as well, even though this service is provided locally by a third party, Circular Materials Ontario.
There are areas where the zone change would have caused a three-week gap in delivery of recycling collection. In these areas there will be an additional collection of recycling, eliminating a service gap by providing back-to-back recycling collection across two weeks. Specifically:
• The area bounded by Indian Road, Brigden Road, Confederation Street/Confederation Line and the City boundary will have recycling collected on the weeks of Dec. 30, 2024 and Jan. 6, 2025.
• The area bounded by Brigden Road, Mandaumin Road, Lake Huron, and Confederation Line will have recycling collection on the weeks of Jan. 6 and 13, 2025.
Finally, the Waste Master Plan includes recommendations for diverting biodegradable organic waste that can be composted, like the green bin programs adopted in other jurisdictions, but no decisions related to this have been finalized.
Decisions related to garbage and organics collection service levels and schedules will be reviewed by Council in 2025 and 2026.
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