Leaves are beginning to change colour and fall to the ground, covering up front and back yards on Coquitlam properties.
The city is set to relieve local homeowners with the return of a six-week seasonal unlimited waste collection program.
Starting Monday (Oct. 17), residents will be able to include leaves and yard trimmings with green cart pick-up on their regularly scheduled collection day.
Coquitlam solid waste and special projects manager Shannon Hadley said it's helping the city dispose of yard waste properly at the end of the growing season.
"Since the program started, the amount of yard waste material collected has doubled to almost 550 tonnes per year," she explained in a release today (Oct. 12).
"All of the collected material is brought to the city’s green waste processing contractor, Net Zero, and along with Green Cart material, is turned into compost that can be used for gardens and lawns."
Coquitlam property owners that receive garbage and green cart collection can set out extra yard trimmings as follows:
- Use garbage cans labelled with "yard trimmings" stickers or kraft paper bags
- Stickers are free and available for pick up from the engineering front counter at Coquitlam city hall or from the City Centre and Poirier Public Libraries
- Bundle and tie branches less than 7.5 cm (three inches) in diameter and no more than one metre (three feet) in length
The trimmings are set to be collected by a separate truck between 5:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. on pick-up days, most likely after green carts are emptied by another vehicle, Hadley added.
The City of Coquitlam has also listed a series of rules local homeowners must follow during the six-week period.
They include:
- Placing all food scraps in your city-issued green cart only
- Food scraps can not be placed in kraft bags or in labelled yard trimmings cans
- City-issued carts can not to be set out before 5:30 a.m. on collection days, even if the green cart contains only yard trimmings
- Fines may apply as per Solid Waste Management Bylaw No. 4679, 2016
- Each bag, can or bundle of extra yard trimmings must weigh less than 20 kg (44 pounds)
- Yard trimmings must not block vehicle traffic, and should not block sidewalks, wherever possible
- Sod, rocks, soil and plastic bags are not accepted in the seasonal collection program or the Green Cart
The unlimited yard trimmings collection program is set to run until Nov. 24.
For more information, you can visit the initiative's page on the City of Coquitlam website.
