Biweekly garbage pickup underway in Moosomin
July 21, 2025, 2:23 pm
Kara Kinna
As of July 1, Moosomin moved from weekly to biweekly garbage pickup.
Residents on the east side of Main Street will have their garbage picked up every second Monday, and their recycling picked up on the alternating Mondays. Residents on the west side of Main Street will have their garbage picked up every second Tuesday, and their recycling picked up on alternating Tuesdays.
The decision to move to biweekly garbage pickup was made in June when council realized there was little to no room left in the town’s landfill if household garbage being picked up by Loraas Disposal continued to go to the landfill.
“That decision was made because we can no longer haul our garbage that Loraas picks up to our garbage dump, so it needs to be hauled to Whitewood, which increased our cost in order to have the garbage picked up,” says Mayor Murray Gray.
“So rather than increasing the cost on the water bills to the tax payers, we thought it was best to try and keep the cost the same having it picked up biweekly rather than weekly.”
Loraas had also explained to us that of all the communities in this region that they deal with, we were the only community that had weekly garbage pickup.
“I feel as though we’ve maybe encourage people to use more garbage by doing that, so hopefully this is an opportunity for people to be a little more conscious of how much they throw out, and maybe we can recycle a little bit more and change some habits. It depends on which side of town you are on. Every week you will either have your garbage picked up on a Monday or Tuesday, or the following week you will have the recycling picked up. It’s split by Main Street east or west.”
Gray says it has taken some time for residents to get used to the changes.
“I think there are growing pains. People missed putting their garbage out not realizing that things had changed,” he said. “But I think it will be good once everyone catches on to it. We have made some exemptions at the dump for people who are just trying to get used to using less garbage. So if they miss their garbage day or they are finding in the week in between they have more garbage, they we’ll take what would be the same as a bin full at the dump for $5 rather than $10 for residents. So I think we are trying to accommodate people the best we can as they try to get used to the changes.”
He says he hopes the changes encourage people to recycle a little bit more.
“Now that it’s two weeks people are going to need to be more conscious of what goes into the garbage and what goes into recycling,” he says. “I have had some positive feedback about that. The negative feedback has more been confusion and not understanding that this wasn’t necessarily a choice of the town of Moosomin, it was the ministry saying your dump is nearing capacity, you are no longer going to be able to take garbage there, so we had to pivot and make a plan that would work in short order.”
The town is in the process of converting the existing landfill to a transfer station.
“Our space that is left will last a little bit longer without Loraas dumping all of our household garbage in there, so whether it’s at the end of the year, or next spring when that happens (that we move to a transfer station), basically all of the garbage that you take out to the dump will then go into a bin and then end up going to Whitewood as well.
“Not much is going to change out there as far as that goes. If you have stuff to take there, you will still be able to take your garbage and it will just go to the Whitewood landfill rather than stay in ours.”
