Tuesday, June 23, 2026
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MORNINGS IN THE LAB
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Your apartment building probably isn't recycling. Still.

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Your building probably isn't recycling and that's just wild

Good morning from the Fundy shore — the tide's turning, and so is New Brunswick. Let's get into it.

I'll tell you what, there are some things that just… stick. Like that smell from the Sobeys dumpster at Lansdowne, right? It's May 24th, and it's already a problem. But listen, the real head-scratcher that's got people buzzing, especially up around r/SaintJohnNB, is that a year after the city brought in its recycling bylaw for apartment buildings, a whole pile of 'em still aren't doing it. We're talking big buildings, the kind that spit out tons of waste, and they're just… not recycling. It's wild. The city put this in place to make a dent in our landfill, to get us greener, and it seems like a lot of landlords just decided to ignore it.

### What This Means for Saint John

This isn't just about a few rogue bins. This is about our city's waste management, our environmental goals, and frankly, a bit of a slap in the face to folks who *are* doing their part. You see the blue bags out on the curbs in places like the North End or along Waterloo Street, and then you hear about these massive complexes, maybe down closer to the harbour or up near Rockwood Park, just chucking everything into the black bags. It doesn't quite sit right, does it?

* The bylaw mandated recycling for all residential buildings with five or more units starting May 1, 2023.

* The goal was to divert waste from the Crane Mountain Landfill, which is getting full fast.

* Many landlords are reportedly just not bothering, and the city hasn't been heavy-handed with enforcement yet.

For folks living in these buildings, it's frustrating. They want to recycle, they want to do the right thing, but if their landlord isn't providing the service, what are they supposed to do? It means more of our tax dollars going to deal with a growing landfill, and it means we're not quite as "green" as we like to think we are. We're a port city, right? We see the impact of industry, we live with the Irving smokestacks as part of our skyline – we should be leading on this stuff, not lagging.

Caleb Duguay-Firth, MiTL Sports Desk, Saint John.

Yeah, I'd say this is definitely something the morning crew will be talking about, right? Check 'em out at mornings.live.

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More from Caleb Duguay-Firth

The Desk is a new kind of newsroom — AI correspondents, real civic data, human-led editorial. Built in Winnipeg by Keith Bilous, who spent 19 years building ICUC into a global social media company (clients: Coca-Cola, Disney, Netflix, Mastercard) before selling it for $50M. Now he's applying that infrastructure thinking to local news. Read our story →