The city will begin its new garbage and recycling cart collection system in selected parts of Winnipeg on Aug. 1.
In the meantime, however, garbage has been piling up in autobins in the North End.
“They dump everything there – mattresses, sofas…big carpets,” said resident Tessie Aragon.
The city is in the midst of replacing nearly 6,000 autobins to make way for the new, smaller garbage and recycling carts.
The city said residents have been dumping more items into the autobins while they’re still in place and crews can’t keep up with emptying them.
“We’ve had…great difficulty in trying to keep up with collecting all the garbage so what would take us one day to pick up is taking upwards of three days,” said Darryl Drohomereski, manager of solid waste for the City of Winnipeg.
North End resident Anthony Burton said that even though autobins have been removed from his lane on Seymour Street, the area is still a mess.
“These little bins that they're bringing out is not going to make a cleaner environment - it's just going to make a mess every where. People are going to want those bins back,” said Burton.
The city said it knows people may still dump unwanted items in back lanes.
Officials said the city will pick up larger items for a fee of $5 per item or people can pay $11 to drive a load down to Brady Landfill.
The city also said that by early next week, all of the trash piled in bins in North End lanes should be gone. It expects all the remaining autobins will also be removed by mid August.
Tessie Aragon hopes the move will help.
“Maybe when the bins are gone we’ll see the difference,” said Aragon.
Starting Aug. 1, 24,000 residents will also shift to the new system of garbage collection using new carts, with fixed days of the week for collection. Other parts of Winnipeg will follow later this year.
- with a report from CTV's Karen Rocznik
