Red Deerians may see an adjustment in their utility bills as the City of Red Deer has been running full speed ahead on implementing green cart collection come spring.

At Red Deer City council’s operating budget deliberations, council approved raising the utility bills in the City by just over $1 million in 2018, which means residents will pay around $1 a month per household for green carts.

“We’ll be launching the green cart program April 9th. That’s the week we will begin collection,” said Janet Whitesell, waste management superintendent for the City.

She added that they proposed around a 6.5% increase in the budget, with 5% related to the implementation of the cart program, and the other bit related to inflation and growth.

She said residents will see a new rate in March, which will be one rate, a waste management rate.

“Right now the utility bill shows garbage and blue box collection separately,” said Whitesell.

She said the rate will now cover the green cart, garbage collection and recycling collection all together.

“We’ll be out delivering carts in February and March and then collection will start in April when yard waste collection would have regularly started, (the week of April 9th).”

She said the green cart can take one’s yard waste, food waste, pet waste and anything in one’s garbage currently that can be composted.

“Our pilot folks are sending out 39 per cent less garbage than our customers who aren’t on the pilot project, so it’s a big increase in diversion and really goes a long way to reducing the amount of garbage that we have to send to the landfill,” she said.

Whitesell said in 2019, the City will be launching blue carts for recycling and black carts for garbage.

“At that time, we’ll also introduce every other week collection for those two carts, so everybody will get three carts once we’re through our phased implementation.”