Type your address: the next collection days at it, and exactly which of the garbage, green bin, blue box and grey box goes out on each one — read live from the City's own calendar, holiday shifts included.
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Kingston's collection week has three moving parts, and getting any of them wrong costs you two weeks. Garbage and the green bin go out weekly. The blue box and the grey box alternate, so which one is due depends on the week, not the day. A statutory holiday pushes the rest of that week a day later. And roughly every fourth week, a second untagged bag is taken.
This reads the City's own waste calendar for the address you type — the same schedule behind the Kingston Waste App, with the holiday shifts already applied. It shows the dates as the City publishes them; it does not compute any of them.
One bag free, then $4 a tag
The City collects one untagged bag or container of garbage a week. Anything beyond that needs a bag tag, which costs $4.00 each — sold in sets of four online ($16.00, plus a $1.50 handling fee) and singly at shops around the city. Low- and moderate-income households can buy them at a reduced price through the Municipal Fee Assistance Program. A "two garbage bags" week, which the calendar above names when one comes up, is the exception: two untagged bags are taken.
Carts are arriving neighbourhood by neighbourhood, and recycling is not part of it
Since 1 July 2025 the City has been replacing garbage bags and green bins with wheeled carts — 120 L for each — starting with about 15,000 homes in the north and east ends and aiming to cover most of Kingston by 2030. The City's address list flags 15,134 addresses as cart collection today against 62,383 still on bag-and-bin curbside, so most of town has not changed yet. Recycling is not in the rollout at all: the blue and grey boxes stay boxes, whichever side of it you are on. The City's own map says which your address is.
Recycling is not the City's to fix
Blue and grey box collection moved to Circular Materials Ontario under the province's producer-funded transition, and is run on the ground by Emterra. A missed or damaged box is theirs: 1-888-597-1541, or customercareont@emterra.ca. Garbage, the green bin and the carts are still the City's, at 613-546-0000.
Apartment buildings are usually not on this calendar
The City collects at the curb from houses and small buildings. Larger apartment and condo buildings arrange their own collection with a private hauler, so an address in one may return nothing here — that is not a mistake, it means the building's own schedule is the one that applies. Ask the property manager, or see the City's apartment and condo waste page.
Collection dates: the City of Kingston's own waste calendar, read live.
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