Picking up garbage less often could help Canadians recycle more

Curbside waste collection is an important part of municipal waste management. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov Picking up garbage less often could help Canadians recycle more Published: September 8, 2026 1.57pm EDT Share article Print article Canada produces an enormous amount of waste. In 2020, total solid waste across the country hit 36 million tonnes. Most of this garbage, known in the industry as residual waste, ends up in landfills or incinerators. Aside from shrinking landfill space and the environmental toll of burning trash, this approach to waste management is unsustainable and irresponsible. This is far from only a Canadian issue. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 12 calls for substantially reducing waste worldwide through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse by 2030. However, Canada is lagging behind. The European Union set a target of recycling at least 50 per cent of household waste by 2020. Wales, one of Europe’s recycling success stories, had already surpassed its own 64 per cent target and is now on track to reach 70 per cent. Meanwhile, Canada’s national waste diversion rate hovers around 27 per cent. Federal efforts aim to reduce total waste by 30 per cent by 2030, alongside regulations targeting plastic waste. While reducing the amount of waste Canadians produce remains essential, improving what happens to the waste we already generate is part of this process. Municipalities can increase the proportion of waste diverted from landfills and incinerators and to recycling and composting. Rethinking curbside collection My co-researcher, economics PhD student Kailun Cao, and I wondered whether municipalities could improve diversion simply by optimizing their existing curbside collection programs. Our study investigated what variations in curbside collection programs correlated with increased recycling rates. We examined collection frequency, requirements to sort recyclables into separate bins and the availability of organic food and yard waste composting services. Lead author Jonathan Wilansky, left, with co-researcher Kailun Cao. (Concordia University), CC BY-ND We selected England and Wales because their mandatory reporting systems make recycling data relatively transparent and accessible. In Canada, by contrast, this data is fragmented and sparse, making it difficult to evaluate. Even so, our findings offer potential insights for Canada and other countries, where curbside collection programs share…