‘Beyond an inconvenience,’ family goes two months without recycling pick up

Curbside collection has been a frustration for many including an Oro-Medonte family who hasn’t had their recycling picked up in two months.

If you miss a garbage or recycling pickup on any given day, it can be frustrating. However, a family in Oro-Medonte has not had their recycling collected since Dec. 16 of last year, resulting in a pile of recyclables accumulating in their garage and driveway for over two months.

Adriana Winterick and her family of six have been trying to deal with Emterra Environmental to get her recycling picked up.

The company arrived at her house on Fri., Feb. 20, to finally collect the debris but ended up leaving multiple items behind.

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“If you miss it once or twice, I get it. But after the third time, you should notice a house here,” said Winterick.

On Jan. 1, the township was no longer responsible for recycling responsibilities as Circular Materials took over the collection. Resulting in missed pickups from both the township and the new contractor.

“The first two pickups, I just gave them the benefit of the doubt, or Emterra maybe didn’t know who was doing what,” said Winterick.

Winterick had reached out to Emterra on Jan. 14 and pinpointed her home on GPS with the company, yet her home was still missed by collection vehicles on her next pickup day.

Winterick told CTV News Emterra arrived at her home to discuss the matter further only after she emailed a local news outlet and had them attached to her email.

“It’s beyond an inconvenience,” said Winterick. “After every time grocery shopping, opening the diapers, bags, and all that kind of stuff, I got tired of doing it and throwing boxes in here because we had a mountain. You couldn’t go into our garage.”

After weeks of communication with Emterra, a recycling truck and a supervisor arrived on site to collect the material but still left additional cardboard boxes on her driveway.

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“They came and only picked up our recycling bags, so they left all of our cardboard, and I asked them why they’re not taking our cardboard, and Emterra stated that some of the cardboard is over 34 in., which is why we ran out of twine,” said Winterick. “We bought twine so we could actually wrap up our cardboard.”

For now, cardboard remains on the property, with the next scheduled pick-up being Feb. 24.

“All I can do is on Tuesday hope they’ll actually pick it up and actually take the cardboard that they, for some reason, didn’t pick up today just because a few boxes were too big,” said Winterick.

Circular Materials provided a statement through Emterra Environmental to CTV News that said:

“We have reviewed service data for this location to better understand the issue and help ensure future collections run smoothly. We coordinated with the resident to arrange for their recycling material to be picked up and sent staff and a truck to the household on Feb. 20. Materials that are placed roadside, are clearly visible, and meet Ontario recycling requirements will be collected. We will return to the household on the regularly scheduled bi-weekly collection days to ensure packaging and paper recycled material is picked up on a timely basis.”

Winterick said Feb. 24 is the next collection day for recycling.