The company that now collects household waste west of Yonge St. is already performing at least as well as city employees did when they had the job, city figures suggest.

Just four months into GFL Environmental East Corp.’s seven-year contract, it is too soon to declare Mayor Rob Ford’s signature policy a success. But the figures lend credence to Ford’s claim that contracting out garbage collection could save money without hurting service.

“I said that I wanted them to be meeting all of their contractual obligations by Week 6. And we were doing that by Week 6, and we really started to get good by about Week 8 or 9,” said city solid-waste chief Jim Harnum. Compared with the city’s performance last year, Harnum said, “The contractor’s doing about the same, if not a little better.”

GFL’s performance will have a significant impact on future council decisions. If the company continues to meet or exceed expectations, conservatives may push to outsource collection east of Yonge during this council term — even though Ford signalled in May that he wanted to wait until next term so he could use the issue as a platform wedge in the 2014 campaign.

“We may not have to (wait),” said Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, the Ford ally who chairs the public works committee. “If we get data that suggests, over a reasonable length of time, that the service is excellent, then there’s no reason — there are less reasons — that we can’t move faster with exploring greater opportunities for outsourcing.”

GFL took over collection duties on Aug. 7 for the 165,000 households between Yonge St. and Etobicoke. Last year, when the city’s own employees handled that area, the city received 51 complaints per day.

The city got an average of 312 complaints per day during GFL’s problem-plagued first week. But the number then dropped steadily over the next 10 weeks, to a low of 33 per day one week in mid-October.

The number of complaints rose to 59 per day the next week. But it has declined again since mid-November, from 54 complaints to 52, 49, 45, and then 40 for the most recent week for which the city provided data, Dec. 4 to Dec. 10.

GFL is regularly meeting the 6 p.m. pickup deadline many of its trucks missed by hours in early August. The average number of loads dumped after 7 p.m. has dropped from 68 per day during GFL’s first week to 5 or fewer in every week but one since mid-October. During the most recent week, the average was 0.3 per day.

“It was one of the largest start-ups in Canadian history, and it hasn’t taken too long. I think it was a huge success,” said GFL chief executive Patrick Dovigi.

Residents west of Yonge tended to react with a contented shrug when asked Monday about GFL. “It’s been very good. Now, everything, it’s fine. Sometimes they were taking a long time to empty the garbage. Now we find it better,” said Zilda Horta, who lives in the Davenport Rd. area.

The city says its $142-million agreement with GFL will save $11 million per year. Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 416, which represents city waste workers, contends that the true savings figure is millions lower; a communications official said president Mark Ferguson was unavailable for comment Monday.

Harnum said the current dual system, in which GFL collects in the western half of the city and city employees in the east, puts healthy pressure on both the company and the union. He said he is working with the union to improve on cost and customer service.

“I’ve been meeting with the staff and assuring them that I want to help them get better at keeping their jobs in District 3 and 4 (east of Yonge). But they have to work with us. That’s the benefit of having half in-house, half contracted out,” he said.

GFL also handles collection in Etobicoke under a separate agreement. Dovigi said the company will “definitely” seek the east-of-Yonge contract if councils puts the work up for bid.