No rule in Collingwood mentions rats or mice by name. The rules that keep them off your food waste are the County of Simcoe’s green bin rules, and five of them do the work: lock the organics cart, keep the lid shut, set it out no earlier than 5:00 p.m. the night before, bring it back the same day, and bag the smelly material. The by-law then makes any animal that gets into your set-out waste your responsibility.
Who sets the rules here
The Town of Collingwood does not collect green bins. Its own waste page says the County of Simcoe is responsible for all garbage and organic waste pick-up in Collingwood. Recycling changed hands on January 1, 2026, and is now run by Circular Materials and collected by Emterra, but garbage and organics stayed with the County.
That matters for one reason. When people search for a Collingwood rule about bins and animals, the wording they need is in a County by-law, By-law No. 7158-25, and on the County’s organics pages. The Town’s page repeats the set-out times and points there.
The organics cart is collected every week. Garbage and recycling alternate weeks. So the green bin is the one container that holds food and goes to the curb every single week, which is why it gets the attention in this piece.
The five rules, read for rodents
| Rule | Where it is written | Why it matters for a mouse or rat |
|---|---|---|
| Use the built-in lock | County organics page: use the locked position if you have issues with animals | A locked lid is the difference between a smell and a meal |
| Do not over-fill; the lid must close fully | By-law 4.3.2(c) and the County’s set-out instructions | An over-stuffed cart is an open cart |
| No bungee cords on the lid | County set-out instructions | The lock replaces them; a cord suggests the lid does not seal |
| Out no earlier than 5:00 p.m. the day before, at the curb by 7:00 a.m. | By-law 4.2.1 and the Town’s page | Limits the hours food sits at the road overnight |
| Overflow goes in your old green bin or a compostable bag, 2 feet from the cart | County organics page | This is the weak point. A paper bag at the curb has no lid |
The last row is the one to think about. The County allows overflow organics next to the cart, and it also says that if you have overflow on a regular basis you can get a second organics cart for a $50 fee. There is only one cart size, 120 litres. If your household fills it most weeks, the second cart is cheaper than a season of torn bags at the end of the driveway.
The clause that makes it your problem
Section 4.3.4 of the by-law says no owner shall permit waste set out for collection to become uncontained for any reason, including scattering by animals, and that the owner cleans up any spill. Section 4.5.1(h) goes further. It says no person shall permit or fail to prevent any animal from picking over or scattering waste set out from their property.
Read together with 4.4.1(c), which says collection is denied when waste has been scattered by animals, the position is plain. If something gets into your set-out, the truck can leave it behind, the cleanup is yours, and the by-law treats the animal’s access as something you failed to prevent. The lock and a closed lid are how you show you did prevent it.
Bring the cart back the same day
Here the two documents do not say the same thing. The Town of Collingwood’s page asks for empty carts to be off the curb by 7:00 p.m. of the following day. The County by-law says 7:00 a.m. after the day collection is completed.
For rodents, neither deadline is the point. An emptied cart still smells of what was in it, and a cart that spends a second night at the road is a second night of that smell away from the house. Bring it in when you get home. It is the one rule you can beat without any cost.
The kitchen end and the garage end
The County’s instructions start in the kitchen: line the kitchen bin with paper or certified compostable bags, never plastic, and empty it often and rinse it to prevent odours and pests. Its seasonal page adds two more habits that work anywhere: wrap organics in newspaper or a compostable bag, or freeze them until collection day, and rinse the cart out with a hose and baking soda.
Then there is where the cart lives between collections. The County’s advice for bear areas is to keep carts, the organics cart especially, inside a garage or shed until the morning of collection. That keeps food out of reach of anything outdoors, but it also puts the smell right against the garage door. A worn bottom seal or a gap at the corners of a settled slab is one of the entry points listed by a mouse exterminator in Collingwood, and food stored beside it gives a mouse a reason to test it. If the cart lives in the garage, the door seal matters more than it did.
Green bin or backyard composter
The County draws the line clearly. A backyard composter takes fruit and vegetable peelings, egg shells, coffee grounds, and small amounts of grass and dry leaves. The organics cart takes everything else that rots: meat, fish and bones, grease and fat, dairy, and food-soiled paper. Its own page says you should use the cart even if you have a composter.
For a rodent, that division is the whole story. The richest food in the kitchen belongs in a locked plastic cart that leaves every week, not in an open pile on soil. If you also run a composter, the ground-level measures in pest control for rats cover how to keep one from becoming the start of a burrow.
Cottages and weekend properties
A place that is empty from Sunday to Friday has a timing problem the rules do not solve on their own. Organics go out weekly, and the County’s seasonal page is direct about it: if you leave before collection day, either take the waste to a waste site yourself or take it home with you. A green bin left full in a closed garage until the next visit is the thing to avoid.
Closing the building for the season is a different job with a different calendar, and the case for doing it in late summer is set out in our note on seasonal property pest control in Wasaga Beach.
When the bin is not the cause
A tidy green bin removes a reason for rodents to be around the house. It does not remove a mouse that is already inside. If you are hearing movement in the walls or finding droppings in a cupboard, the food source is usually indoors and the fix is the route in, not the cart. That argument, and why sealing beats spraying, is in our guide to pest exclusion in Collingwood.
If you already know you have mice or rats, the pest control in Collingwood page shows which parts of town see which animal, and the service page above sets out how the work is done.