Thousands put out garbage bins in error as schedule changes

It appears thousands of residents didn’t get the message about the winter changes to Regina’s garbage collection schedule.

The city recently made the decision to switch to biweekly pickup over the winter months for single family homes, with the city being divided into two groups. The day of the week garbage is collected hasn’t changed, it’s just that it will happen every other week, as the two groups alternate, until the end of March 2018.

The schedule change began this past Monday with those in Group A, who were the first to have their trash collected. However, the city’s manager of solid waste collection Dave Hughes said 75 per cent of residents in Group B put out their bins in error on that day.

In addition, he said 99 calls came in.

“All of them were resolved by Service Regina on the phone so it didn’t get escalated to one of our departments,” said Hughes.

Since then, around 10 per cent of residents have erroneously put out their bins. In addition, he said the city has averaged between 50 and 100 calls a day but they’ve been quickly resolved.

More than 21,000 have signed up for either phone, text or voicemail reminders from the city as to when their garbage will be collected.