City advises some Guelph businesses to arrange private waste removal amid a reduction in service

Some Guelph businesses have been notified by the city that come March 1, they'll need to hire a private waste removal company to get rid of their garbage amid a reduction in service.

The city recently sent a letter to the affected businesses, which CBC News obtained from Polestar Hearth Bakery, one of the businesses affected by the change. The letter states that businesses which aren't located in a "small, mixed-used building" — meaning buildings with a maximum of six units and where one or more of them is residential — will no longer receive waste removal services from the city. 

This change will affect about 200 businesses in Guelph, the city's manager of technical services Heather Connell said.

"There are over 4,000 classified businesses with employees in Guelph and to ensure fairness and equity, the city is adjusting service levels to the five per cent of properties to bring service in alignment with the other 95 per cent of businesses to ensure consistency for the [industrial, commercial, and institutional] sector," Connell told CBC News. 

'Bring my green garbage home'

Jesse Merrill, owner of Polestar Hearth Bakery on Woolwich Street, said that he's unable to pay for the level of waste removal he currently gets since it isn't in the business plan. 

One company offers an on-demand service, where they leave their bin on the bakery's property and Merrill needs to call them when it's full.

"That's probably the one I'll go with and I'll probably also bring my green garbage home and put it in my home bin," he said.

The letter from the city offered suggestions of five waste removal contractors for those who will lose service come March. Rent-A-Bin is one of the contractors listed, and the rental for their smallest bin is $200 per month. It also costs $104 per metric tonne of waste and there's a 12 per cent fuel surcharge, plus HST on top of that. 

Connell said that since 2020, there were a number of opportunities for businesses to have their say on the issue; however, Merrill said he only learned about it less than two weeks ago. 

"It took me a little while to have it sink in, but one of the first things that came to mind is that we're on a very small property," Merrill said.

"We share our little building with a barber shop and there are six legal parking spots that together the two businesses have to have to have our business license," he added.

"I immediately started to envision where dumpsters are going to go on this property and there is no place for them and the neighbours would not love them even if there were [space]."  

Right now, this bylaw doesn't impact businesses in the downtown core but Connell said service to those businesses is being reviewed and will be decided on by council. 

'Disappointed' 

Morgan Mitchell, the founder and CEO of Green Goddess Fromagerie, moved her business last November from the city's east end to just down the street from Polestar on Woolwich Street.

When they requested new blue, grey and green bins, the city informed them of the change to waste removal services and that the city wouldn't provide new bins.

Instead, Mitchell says they hired a private company for $200 a month to have their waste removed weekly since November.

She said that she was "disappointed" by the move. 

"We did set up a small dumpster with garbage collection services here," said Mitchell. "But it was really unfortunate because there are so many costs associated with doing business, and of course we pay taxes like everybody else does."