The Canadian Condominium Institute (CCI) Northern Alberta is unhappy with Edmonton’s rollout of its new waste collection program in apartments and condominiums.

In 2021, the city launched the new waste collection program for single-family homes, with trash, food scraps and recycling sorted and collected separately.

The city wants all Edmonton apartments and condos to do the same by 2027, and a four-part deployment started in southeast Edmonton last year.

The changes began when municipal teams distributed buckets of leftover food and educational booklets to residents.

“We have a waste education team that visits every door to talk to residents, address concerns, answer questions and get their buy-in to separate their waste into these new programs,” Vahid Rashidi, Waste Transformation Program Director municipal waste. to the city, said.

Anand Sharma, CCI government advocacy co-chair, said that despite these measures, the program has “gone off the rails”.

“(It was not clear) that there would be a considerable reduction in the amount of waste removed from sites, which has led to sites that are now very unsightly (with) overfilled trash cans,” Sharma said .

“We need to slow this program down a little bit,” he said.

While there is no fee to request additional collection for food scraps and recycling, buildings must pay for additional trash collection.

Sharma said some buildings have to handle their own trash removal while still paying for municipal services – which he said drives up condo fees.

“Right now we’re required to use the City of Edmonton’s waste management services…but maybe that’s something we need to change,” he said, adding that the cost of private services can be up to 60 percent cheaper.

“In this era of affordability, maybe that’s something we need to look at.”

Rashidi said he knows there is no one-size-fits-all solution for apartments and condos, and the city is working with property managers and condo boards during the transition.

“(We) recognize that a change like this takes time and it may take some time for residents to get used to the new habits,” Rashidi said.

“We provide them with lots of resources so they are informed about what should go in the leftover food container,” he continued. “We have a really good app, called WasteWise, that they can download to their phone to help.”

CCI said 28 per cent of Edmonton’s condos and apartments have already changed homes. That’s a total of 35,000 units, according to the city.

Northeast Edmonton will be next to see expansion, followed by southwest Edmonton and northwest Edmonton.

The City is offering a virtual information session on the changes on November 19 from 6 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. More information on the the city website.