Recycling in South Frontenac

Jamie Thomas | Jul 17, 2025

It continues to baffle me how reluctant society has become to change while completely missing the bigger picture. Shane Peters article last week was very critical of Circular Materials Ontario (CMO) handling of our recycling, which came into effect July 1st. 

I’d like to point out what they have immediately done well. CMO have completely separated containers from paper and other recycling, brilliant! I never understood why glass containers were mixed in with paper and plastic bags one week, yet cans and plastic containers were collected separately another week. Now we have a more efficient system as all containers will be collected together! 

I won’t miss the hand written notes left behind by SF township employees (SF) together with uncollected materials left behind in my bin. 

SF and CMO websites provide a coloured map to determine one’s area and your collection day. The only confusing part is remembering that CMO work on holidays whereby the public sector SF unsurprisingly do not.

The Ontario government is making these changes to realign costs, not unlike placing alcohol into privately owned stores, while it favourably increased supply sites, they will reduce unsustainable public wages. As LCBO’s and Beer Stores require less workers or start to close, the savings can reduce our massive Ontario deficits or be redeployed into other areas like healthcare. 

In the end our recycling still gets collected, suggesting folks will garbage their papers or containers is possible, but that’s a whole other issue we need address as society seems to feel they have so many rights but no responsibility.