I Don't Need Another *!%^*(%^ Blue Box

Miller and his environuts have turned my home into a garbage transfer station where I have blue boxes for recyclables, grey boxes for newspapers, green boxes for composting and of course an assortment of standard garbage cans for other garbage and I have to take the time to sort and store and I have had enough.....I feel like I am becoming a player in a sequel to Soylent Green.

City goes big and blue

Recycling bins make way for curbside carts

By ROB GRANATSTEIN, CITY HALL BUREAU

The 2010 deadline banning Toronto's garbage from Michigan prompted councillors to forget about a budget crisis and push forward with a $28.5 million plan to replace the city's blue boxes with huge blue carts.

The big, blue wheeled cart, with quadruple the capacity of the regular recycling boxes, was recently tested in Scarborough and resulted in an 11% jump in recycling

"It doesn't matter how much it costs," works committee vice-chairman Adam Giambrone said yesterday. "Our blue boxes have become too small a vehicle."

The city's waste staff said the popularity of the grey and blue bins means people take three or four bins to the curb or just stop recycling when the bins are full.

Councillor Mike Del Grande wondered where the money would come from when spending on garbage is already $45 million over budget guidelines.

"We think money's going to pour from heaven," he said.

The carts, to be wheeled out to 500,000 homes for free, will cost about $50 each.

The city's garbage trucks will also need to have cart-tippers added to them.

Rod Muir of Waste Diversion Ontario, an agency set up to facilitate recycling, slammed the plan.

"The idea a large cart is going to make people recycle more is a fallacy," Muir said. "A box does the job.