Editorial Policy

1. Our Editorial Mission

Canadian waste collection is fragmented across thousands of municipalities, regional districts, regional municipalities, counties, MRCs (in Quebec), and rural service areas — each with its own bin colours, schedule, accepted-materials list, and seasonal yard-waste window. Layered on top, Canada is in the middle of the largest provincial-level recycling reform in its history, with Producer Responsibility Organizations (PROs) taking over financial and operational responsibility for residential recycling under Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) frameworks. The result is that even simple household questions — “what bin does my coffee cup go in?” “is collection delayed for Remembrance Day?” “where do I take my old laptop?” — have answers that vary by community and that have been changing rapidly.

Our editorial mission is to publish practical, step-by-step walkthroughs — manually verified against the live municipal portal and PRO community page — for every Canadian community we cover. The reader leaves a page knowing the city’s collection portal URL, what day collection is, what’s in the Blue Box and Green Bin, when yard waste starts, where to take e-waste and HHW, and how to report a missed pickup.

2. Quality Standards Every Page Meets

• The municipality’s official waste page is verified live, with the city’s collection portal URL
• The address-lookup tool (where one exists) has been tested with a sample address
• The accepted-materials list is captured from the city’s own page (not a third-party summary), including any 2026 EPR transition changes
• Statutory-holiday schedule shifts are listed for the current calendar year (Canada Day, Civic Holiday, Labour Day, Thanksgiving — second Monday of October, Remembrance Day, Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day)
• Bag-tag programs and overage fees are described where applicable
• Bulky-item / large-item booking procedure is described
• HHW and special-stream depot locations are linked to the municipality’s or province’s depot finder
• The relevant PRO is identified for the municipality’s recycling collection
• “Last reviewed” date appears on every page

3. Source Hierarchy — Six Tiers

Full hierarchy with named sources, URLs, and how each is used is on the Sources & Methodology page.

4. Verification — Our Seven-Step Process

1. Identify the right authoritative source. We start with the municipality’s own waste page, cross-checked against the provincial environment ministry’s directory of local-authority contacts and the FCM municipal directory.
2. Verify the URL is current. Municipal websites get redesigned and migrated. We click through every link before publication and confirm the destination is the actual collection-information page.
3. Run the address-lookup tool. Where the city has an address-search tool, we run a sample address (a known public address such as City Hall) and document the on-screen fields and result format.
4. Document the accepted-materials list from the actual page. What’s in, what’s out, special preparation rules — captured from the city’s own list and the PRO community page where applicable.
5. Cross-check the EPR designation. Where the municipality has transitioned to producer-led recycling, we verify the PRO operating in that community against the PRO’s own community-specific page.
6. Note current procedural details, fees, holiday shifts, seasonal yard-waste windows, and service operators. Captured with a “last reviewed” date and re-verified each quarter.
7. Editor sign-off. A second editor reviews the page end-to-end before it goes live.

5. Update Cycles

6. Corrections Process

1. You report it. Email info@garbage-collection.org with subject “Correction” and the page URL.
2. We acknowledge. Response within seven business days confirms receipt.
3. We verify. An editor goes back to the official source and confirms the current position with a fresh sample lookup.
4. We correct. If confirmed, the page is updated. Substantive corrections — wrong URL, wrong PRO, wrong accepted-materials list — trigger a published correction note dated and described in plain English.
5. We tell you. The reporter is notified once the correction is live.

7. Bilingual Coverage

8. AI Tools and Authorship

• AI tools may be used for first drafts, summarisation of municipal pages, formatting consistency, and language polish
• Every municipality walkthrough is run against the live portal by a human editor before publication — AI cannot substitute for live verification
• Portal URLs, accepted-materials lists, holiday shifts, PRO operators, and depot locations are confirmed against the official page by a human
• AI-generated text that turns out to misstate a procedure is corrected through the standard corrections process
• We do not allow AI to invent municipality-specific procedures, fabricate by-law citations, or describe PRO operators that do not exist

9. Editorial Independence

We do not take payment from any Canadian municipality, regional district, provincial environment ministry, Producer Responsibility Organization (Circular Materials, Recycle BC, ARMA, SK Recycles, MMSM, Recyc-Québec, ÉEQ, Divert NS, IWMC, MMSB, Encorp Atlantic), national stewardship program, or waste-hauling company in exchange for editorial coverage. We do not take payment from any commercial waste-management service for being mentioned, recommended, or omitted on a municipality page. The site is funded by display advertising on the principle that advertising and editorial are separate functions.

10. Advertising and Competition Bureau Standards

• Display advertisements are visually distinct from editorial content and labelled where required
• Where any commercial relationship exists with a service relevant to our audience, it is disclosed in context per Competition Bureau guidance on influencer and online endorsement disclosure
• Sponsored content, if it ever appears, is clearly identified as paid-for
• We do not insert commercial links above the verified municipal or PRO portal links on a page; the official source always comes first

Competition Bureau guidance: competitionbureau.gc.ca.

11. Conflicts of Interest

• The editorial team is not employed by, contracted to, or financially connected to any Canadian municipality, regional district, PRO, or waste-hauling company
• The editorial team is not employed by, contracted to, or financially connected to any commercial EPR-compliance service or producer-side consultancy
• We don’t accept gifts, hospitality, or considerations from these organizations in exchange for coverage

12. Sensitive Topics

Canadian waste-collection content intersects with several sensitive areas. We try to handle them fairly:

• EPR transition controversies. The shift from municipal-funded to producer-led recycling is contested in some communities. We describe what’s actually being implemented and link to both PRO-side and municipal-side perspectives without taking sides.
• Bag-tag and pay-as-you-throw schemes. Some Canadian communities use bag tags or volume-limited collection. We describe the current rules without endorsing or criticising the policy choice.
• Waste-to-energy facilities and landfill siting. These are politically contested. We describe what’s operating and where, without entering siting debates.
• Indigenous and First Nations waste collection. Service delivery on First Nations reserve lands operates under different jurisdictional frameworks (federal Indian Act, ISC funding, individual Nation by-laws). We describe what’s published by each Nation and direct readers to the Nation’s own waste-information channels.
• Northern and remote-community waste. Yukon, Nunavut, and Northwest Territories communities face very different logistics — we don’t impose southern-Canada assumptions.
• Property owners and identifying information. Sample address lookups in walkthroughs use public addresses (City Hall, public libraries) rather than residential addresses.

13. Reader Feedback

Substantive feedback — corrections, suggestions, broken-link reports — is logged and addressed within seven business days. Residents, building managers, municipal staff, sustainability consultants, and journalists who use these portals daily often spot inconsistencies before our quarterly review catches them. Feedback that is abusive, threatening, or harassing is not engaged with and may be reported under our Terms of Service.

14. Language, Tone, and Accessibility

• Pages are written in plain Canadian English at a level intended to be accessible to a general adult audience
• Acronyms are spelled out on first use (EPR, PRO, MRF, HHW, IC&I, MRC, FCM, CCME, ECCC, CRTC, CASL, PIPEDA, OPC, CAI, ARMA, MMSM, MMSB, IWMC, EPRA)
• French-language municipal portals are linked where they exist
• We follow our Accessibility Statement, including WCAG 2.1 AA targets and alignment with the Accessible Canada Act and provincial accessibility laws (AODA in Ontario, BC Accessibility Act, Manitoba AMA, Nova Scotia AA)