FAQs

The Comprehensive Integrated Waste Management Strategy (CIWMS) is the City of Winnipeg’s plan for managing garbage and recycling. The CIWMS was approved by City Council in 2011. It guides how Winnipeg collects, sorts, and gets rid of garbage and recycling. This plan helps keep the city clean, reduces waste, and helps protect the environment by ensuring that things get reused or recycled whenever possible. It also provides a roadmap for new programs and services that help fight climate change.

Winnipeg manages close to 500,000 tonnes of waste a year. The environmental, economic, and social impacts of that waste affect all of us. The CIWMS was first written in 2011 and a lot has changed since then. An update will help us improve our targets, programs, and services for all customers (such as houses, apartments and condos, commercial, institutional, and construction and demolition).

Phase 1 of public engagement begins in November 2023. Residents can provide input through a survey or post ideas on the ideas wall. The City will also be meeting and conducting interviews with community groups, environmental organizations, producer responsibility organizations, policy makers, and demolition and construction organizations.

Phase 2 of public engagement is expected in 2024.

At this time, we do not know if there is any fee or services changes for our customers until the CWIMS is updated and approved by City Council. Any new fees will require City Council approval.

A diversion rate shows how much (percentage) of our garbage is being kept out of landfills and instead, being reused, recycled, or composted. It tells us how good we are at finding ways to not just throw everything away, but to give items a second life or turn them into something new.

Right now, we live in a linear economy where we take, make and dispose of items. The circular economy is a different way of using resources.

In a circular economy, nothing is waste. Instead of making, using, and throwing things away, we aim to design products and systems in a way that they can be kept in use or be recycled over and over again.

We need to rethink how we buy, use and throw out used items to reduce the costs and impacts of waste. In the waste hierarchy, throwing garbage away in the landfill is the last resort. The waste hierarchy places priority on:

1. Preventing waste (reduce and reuse);
2. Diverting waste from the landfill (recycle and recover) and;
3. Minimizing what goes into the landfill (dispose).

The CIWMS helps reduce environmental impacts by:

• Conserving resources. Recycling saves energy, reduces water consumption, and reduces the need for raw materials.
• Reducing pollution. When we throw garbage into landfills, the garbage breaks down over time, and this process creates methane. Methane is a harmful greenhouse gas that traps heat in our atmosphere, contributing to climate change. Methane gas is about 25 times more harmful that C02 - the gas that comes out of the tailpipes of cars.
• Reducing waste. If we throw away less garbage and instead recycle, reuse, or compost more, we reduce the amount of waste in landfills.

We plan to submit a final updated CIWMS to City Council in winter 2024/25. The updated CIWMS will include a five-year implementation plan to guide actions to 2030, and longer.