The City of Hamilton is making it easier for new developments to receive municipal garbage collection by changing multiple aspects of their Waste Design Requirements.
The city’s Waste Design Requirements lay out rules that developments must follow to qualify for municipal garbage collection.
They include rules surrounding private access routes, waste storage, set-out and staging, loading areas and waste separation that property developers and building owners must follow.
The requirements were updated in 2011, 2015, and 2021, but city staff and representatives from the development industry identified new challenges, particularly in regard to small infill developments.
The city says that a “significant number” of properties do not meet the minimum design for safe municipal servicing, which is sometimes due to site-specific constraints.
Still, in other cases, developers may decide to opt for private waste collection so that they do not have to incorporate the city’s waste design requirements into their final design.
The report shows that, in the past four years, only 195 of the 724 new residential developments in the city (26.9 per cent) were designed for municipal waste collection.
One change that the city will be making is related to turnaround areas on private roads.
The Waste Design Requirements allow for a single T turnaround area, which enables waste collection vehicles to make three-point turns.
In the past, turnaround areas were required to be a dedicated route and could not have residential units or parking spaces in the vicinity.
Staff say that the requirement has “proven to be a barrier in a number of development applications.”
Thus, the updated requirements allow parking spaces and dwelling units to be located adjacent to turnaround areas.
Minimum dimensions for turnaround areas and maximum allowable reversal distance specifications remain the same
The current Waste Design Requirements also require that multi-residential properties with six or more units must be designed to accommodate on-site front-end collection services.
However, the front-end collection method requires large storage areas, on-site loading space and the ability for collection vehicles to enter and exit in a continuous forward motion.
Staff say that these requirements are a challenge to infill developments and smaller sites, which are becoming more common in Hamilton.
So, between January and July 2025, staff conducted a pilot, providing garbage carts to a number of small residential buildings ranging in size from six to 28 units.
The buildings were provided with 360-litre garbage carts that would be set out at the curb each week on collection day.
The carts provide an alternative to piles of garbage bags and front-end container collection.
The pilot was successful, and the city has identified that approximately 550 existing small multi-residential buildings that the city currently services are suitable for the new garbage cart collection.
The West End Home Builders’ Association (WE HBA), which represents land development, housing and renovation industries in Hamilton, says that the new changes represent “a meaningful improvement.”
However, Amanda Stringer, Manager of Government Relations at the WE HBA added that the organization wants to see even greater flexibility.
For example, Waste Design Requirements still limit developments to only one turnaround per site, and waste storage areas must be no more than a 100-metre round-trip away.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
