Oakville Loose Leaf Collection Starts October 26

Raking season now has a schedule attached. Oakville's loose leaf collection starts Monday, October 26 and runs to Friday, December 4, with crews working through designated neighbourhoods zone by zone.

The town is divided into numbered zones 1 through 8 plus lettered zones A, B and C, and each gets several passes across those six weeks. Zones 1, 2, 3 and 7 go first, the week of October 26. Zones 4, 5, 6 and 8 follow the week of November 2, and the rotation continues until the final pass the week of November 30. Leaves need to be out by 7 a.m. on the first day of your zone's scheduled week, because crews can come through at any point during it. The town also asks that nothing go out more than seven days ahead of a scheduled week, mostly so the pile does not end up back down the street.

Where the pile sits matters as much as when. Leaves belong on the boulevard or the road shoulder, never over a catch basin, in a bike lane or in a ditch. If leaves are already blocking a storm drain in front of your house, the town asks residents to clear them. Piles mixed with garbage, brush, branches, large twigs or stones get left behind, and so does anything put out after the pickup dates.

One change this year: some November zone schedules overlap on purpose. Staff say the overlap gives crews room to catch up when weather slows them down, which keeps the whole schedule from sliding.

Bagged leaves are a separate program run by Halton Region, collected on the same day as your regular garbage.