REGINA — A “game-changing” tactic has helped with garbage in North Central.
Last year, the City of Regina launched the Litter Free Lanes Pilot Project between September 2025 and January 2026 in North Central to address residents’ concerns about alleyway litter. North Central was chosen as it accounted for nearly 50 per cent of the city's litter calls in 2024.
One method the city tested was locking carts for dozens of households.
“Those locked bins were a game changer for some of the bad alleys. It really reduced the amount of loose trash that was around,” said Pat Faulconbridge, executive director of the North Central Community Association.
Faulconbridge described seeing noticeable improvements in the alleyways once certain homeowners/renters could use lock bins.
“The visible presence of garbage in alleyways definitely dropped off.”
In a recent report, the city said 67 per cent of residents who used the locked bins saw less litter and scavenging.
There was also a 100 per cent reduction in litter service requests for residents who used locked bins.
Causes of trashed alleyways
Faulconbridge identified several reasons for trashed alleyways, including overloaded bins sifted through by people.
“Some people are going through trash looking for food, but some people are going through trash looking for things that they could possibly sell.”
Faulconbridge gave one example of a person walking around calling the trash “their shopping mall.”
Another factor is that North Central is made up largely of renters rather than homeowners.
“We've got renters in homes that may not know that they're supposed to sort their garbage or they haven't been told, like what day the garbage carts go out,” said Faulconbridge.
"They may not have been educated on, you need to pull the carts in and not leave them in the alley because then these loose transient people wouldn't be able to go through them because the transient people that go through the trash generally won't go into people's yards.”
Trash has also been dumped from other parts of the city into the alleyways of North Central.
“People drive down the alley with a half-ton truck, and they just throw garbage off the half-ton truck into the alley, so we do have some of that,” said Faulconbridge.
Solutions
Faulconbridge believes the city should introduce locked bins in areas that experience high volumes of trash.
“We could really target high areas of trash and see a difference.”
In the report, city administration noted introducing widespread expansion of locking carts would require approval of increased funding in a future budget year.
At Regina’s executive committee meeting last week, Mayor Chad Bachynski said he would consider expanding the use of locked carts.
“It's something that I've seen and heard loud and clear that we need to be looking at solutions for some of the challenges that we face with some of the garbage that does get strewn about in some areas. And that we saw some success with the pilot, I would like to see what those numbers look like for the budget for sure.”
