HALIFAX -- Nearly one year after the Halifax Regional Municipality implemented clear bags for garbage, the numbers show the change is helping to clean up a messy business.     

Garbage collector Corey Canfield says he’s seen a marked improvement in just one year.

“With the clear bags, we have a better idea of what's in them, and we can see if it is not properly sorted,” he says. “The amount of garbage in general has gone down.”

The garbage that Canfield does collect ends up at the landfill, where it gets separated and sorted.

However, officials say there has been less waste and more recycling since clear bags became mandatory. Contents can no longer be hidden in black bags, with the exception of a privacy bag.

The city estimates there has been a 24 per cent reduction at the landfill, and a 15 per cent increase at the recycling depot.

“It was beyond our wildest imaginations,” says Halifax solid waste manager Matt Keliher. “And with the structure of our contract at Otter Lake, for every tonne that doesn't go to the facility, we don't pay for it to be processed.”

So far, Keliher says that adds up to a savings of $1.5 million dollars on 10,000 tonnes.  

However, one area that still needs work is separating paper from plastic. Despite the ‘two products, two bags’ rule, Keliher says a lot of people still mix it up and lump them in together.

“What happens when that goes to the facility is the paper gets degraded,” he says. “We get a less valuable paper, and sometimes it ends up going into the garbage stream, which is where we don't want it to go.”

The city is planning a new recycling campaign this fall, but until then, there are still rejection stickers for those who don't comply with the rules. 

Overall, though, compliance has been high.

“There is less garbage that is going to the dump, and less things that we are putting in the landfill and trying to get rid of,” says Canfield.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Kelland Sundahl.