Recycling Transition Hiccups in South Frontenac

Jemma Dooreleyerrs | Jul 17, 2025

For ten days, Ted Doleman, a resident of McNichols Lane on 30 Island Lake in South Frontenac, has been calling Emterra and Circular Materials (the companies in charge of the new recycling system in South Frontenac) to find out when his and 60 other neighbours’ recycling is going to be picked up.

Doleman and some other residents share a large shed at the end of the road to store their recycling and for almost two weeks, Doleman has been watching the shed and the area surrounding the shed, fill up with recycling that he keeps being told by Emterra, will be picked up by the end of each day he’s called.

“Emterra said they were supposed to have started picking up the recycling a week ago last Friday and every day since then I have been calling everyday asking them to pick up the recycling and every day they tell me they’re either doing it that day or the following day,” he said. “And then they don’t pick up the recycling, including today (Tuesday, July 15), it’s still not picked up.”

The reason Emterra gave: “unforseen circumstances.” They tell him he is on their list and that a truck will be around shortly to pick up his recycling. The truck has not come yet.

Doleman, who used to work in the oil sands business in Alberta, working with large contracts and dealing with transitions from one contractor to another, feels as though it the roll-out has been a “non-mitigation disaster” that will cause the environment to suffer.

“They don’t appear to have sufficient staff, sufficient trucks, knowledge of the area to complete the work,” he said. “The citizens are put in a position where they have a choice, they can try and store the recycling and watching it build up or it appears to be that people are diverting the recycling into the waste stream or their burning it.”

He believes that the province should be held accountable for making these changes.

“This is the full accountability of the provincial government favouring the ones who decided to make these changes and now we will bear the brunt of these costs one way or another.”

John Jordan, Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston’s MPP has been made aware of the frustrations residents are feeling towards the new system and sent Frontenac News an emailed statement:

“Under the old recycling system, municipalities shared the cost of recycling. Now, the responsibility falls on the producers that design, market and distribute the packaging and single-use items. Making producers responsible for the end-of-life management of their packaging and diversion targets will encourage more recycling, reduced packaging and improved packaging design. My office is aware of the recycling transition from the municipality to the province commencing on July 1. We contacted Emterra directly and the roll-out has been slow due to new routes being added and the logistics of starting a new system. Residents that have concerns should contact Emterra at 1-888-597-1541 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to confirm their address is in their system. Although understandably frustrating for some residents, they are encouraged to be patient as Emterra works through the transition.”

The Province of Ontario has shifted the responsibility of recycling to the producers of the waste to ensure that they are making their quotas when it comes to recycled goods to balance out their single use containers that they produce.  So, companies like Coca-Cola and other producers of containers have contracted out waste management to a non-profit corporation called Circular Materials. Circular Materials has divided the responsibilities of recycling into different areas across the province. Emterra is in charge of South Frontenac’s recycling.

Kyle Bolton, the Director of Public Services with the South Frontenac Township, has been working with Circular Materials and Emterra for almost a year and half and sent in recommendations per the company’s request, for how best to roll-out the changes in the recycling system.

“Over the last year and a bit we had provided a bunch of things like existing root maps, household accounts and all the things that were currently being done and would be done in the future. So as part of provincial regulations that were to keep providing collection so we provided all of the information on what we were doing,” said Bolton

“Through those dealings we had requested that the collection days remain the same and that they maintain the four-day collection week over the five days they were implementing”

While the township had requested that they maintain the previous collection schedule to make it easier for residents to make the transition, Circular Materials and Emterra were creating a new province wide schedule so they informed South Frontenac that they would be making the shift to five collection days. Although the township was informed that the collection would be happening five days a week, according to Bolton, that is currently not the case.

“We were advised by Circular Materials that we would be moving to five-day collection which is not the case because currently we are only being collected Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.”

“The communication that we received is that we had requested to keep the collection days the same and keep the four-day system and we were informed that it wasn’t possible.”

“The changes they made were made within the regulations set out by the province and we weren’t really in the position to stop them.”

Something that Bolton wants to reiterate is that Circular Materials and Emterra have called the period between July 1st 2025 and December 31st 2025 a transition period and the regulations were very specific about what they could and couldn’t change during the transition period. They couldn’t change the frequency of collection but they could change the day.

Bolton also wants to clarify some of the most frequent questions his office has been receiving.

“The biggest question we’re asked is ‘do I need a yellow bin or box’,” said Bolton. “There was a lot of communication that came out from Emterra and Circular Materials that talked about a yellow box so our main message that we’re pushing out right now is that there is no yellow box. There’s a blue stream and a yellow stream, more specifically, a container stream and a fibre stream.”

Bolton assures people that South Frontenac is currently working with Circular Materials and the township’s recycle app provider to get recycling days and garbage collection days separate on the app so that the residents will be able to see the two different days.

“We’re trying to expedite that to help get that information out to residents to help clarify when your garbage and recycle day is.

“There have been some frustrations and there have been come hiccoughs but we are still working diligently with Circuclar Materials and Emterra to help the process for residents and our customer service with residents,” said Bolton. “I hear our team answering the phone and trying to help clarify collection days and help answer questions.”

“We aren’t trying to wash our hands of it,” said Bolton. “We want to help residents and recycling needs to be easy. They need to be able to recycle and we want to encourage people to recycle even if we’re not responsible for it because waste diversion is still important to the township and we still want to limit the amount of waste that’s going to our landfills.”

South Frontenac’s mayor, Ron Vandewal is also encouraging patience from residents as the kinks get ironed out.

“I don’t know if anybody could manage a provincial change in a system and not have glitches in two weeks,” he said. “I understand the frustration but it is a major shift.”

He wanted to reiterate that while it is frustrating locally, it was ultimately the decision from the province and the township has no control over that.

“It was all taken away from us we actually have no control at all over the recycling,” he said. “Just like other things, a liquor license gets taken away by the province, we get blamed for it, the province takes over the recycling and we get blamed for it.”

Emterra continues to plead patience from residents as the changes roll-out and encourages residents to continue putting out their recycling on their designated day, before 7 am.