on city council refuse to look at technology alternatives to landfill so the city feels they should be sending out by-law enforcement officers to ensure we are following the recycling mantra..... the experts on the city staff say meeting 60% very unlikely but the mayor is promising to reach 70%.
Trash talk
Is recycling worth the effort? Or are we just wasting our time?
By ZEN RURYK, CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF
Green bin, blue box, yard waste bags -- there's little argument that Torontonians have embraced recycling as a part of their daily routine.
In keeping with efforts to continually increase the junk that people can recycle, the city declared just last week that residents can now start tossing cardboard cans such as empty frozen orange juice containers into the the blue box.
Despite the enthusiasm people display for recycling programs, there's a discouraging bottom line: Current efforts fall far short of what city trash experts say are required to meet waste diversion targets.
The city's recycling and waste reduction programs gobbled up 40% -- or 346,000 tonnes --of the rubbish that would otherwise have gone to a landfill last year.
TARGET 60%
Current targets call for the city to recycle or divert 60% of its garbage from going to a dump by Dec. 31, 2008.
The mayoral candidate who wins the Nov. 13 election will face a formidable task if the city is to succeed in meeting the goal.
The newly elected council will be asked to look at such issues as imposing fees on people who throw out a lot of garbage or dispatching trash police to investigate cases where homeowners refuse to recycle.
Geoff Rathbone, planning and policy director for Toronto's solid waste department, says it is "incredibly difficult" to increase the city's diversion rate by even 1%. Trash officials predict this year's total will not exceed 42%.
"Certainly, the expression we use here is we've picked the low hanging fruit and that each new percentage point of diversion is more and more difficult than the last," he adds.
Rathbone says no other Canadian city has reached a 60% diversion rate, and those in other countries that make the claim measure their recycling yields in a more generous way than Toronto.
In fact, Rathbone adds he's not aware of any municipality with Toronto's significant number of condominiums and apartment buildings doing much better than the city.
Recycling programs just haven't worked well in Toronto's apartment buildings and condominiums. The diversion rate for single-family homes was 53% last year, compared to only 13% in multi-residential unit buildings.
Toronto's trash gurus have a series of initiatives in the works. They include the introduction of the green bin into condominiums and apartment buildings -- something that could boost diversion levels by 35,000 tonnes annually.
City council has decided to spend $28.5 million to give people recycling carts -- about four times as large as a blue box --which are supposed to boost the yields of collected material by 15,000 tonnes annually once they're in the hands of homeowners.
Toronto residents can also expect to see city councillors mulling over measures intended to get tough with those who do not endorse recycling initiatives.
While it previously rejected this measure just last week, city council will look again at the prospect of deploying bylaw enforcement officers to homes where people are not recycling.
BAG TAGS
Also on the horizon, is the issue of imposing fees -- bag tags --on those who throw out large amounts of garbage.
Mayor David Miller, who is seeking a second term in office, rejects the idea of hitting people with fees if they exceed bag limits at the curb.
"The point of having a levy is as an incentive for behaviour. People at single-family-homes -- we don't need a levy," he adds. "It's just double taxation. It's taxing people for something they already do for free."
He did support hitting apartment building and condominium owners with a fee if residents at those locations exceeded designated trash disposal limits. The idea failed this term to fly for budgetary reasons.
His re-election program sets a diversion target of 70% by 2010. Conceding it's an ambitious goal, Miller says that working with the senior levels of government to attain tougher packaging laws is one way the city can meet his target.
Challenger Jane Pitfield, a city councillor who served as chairman of the works committee, has incorporated a bag-tag scheme into her platform. Current curb limits let people put out six garbage bags every two weeks.
Under her plan, people could put out four bags at the curb every two weeks without any penalty. Additional bags would each have to bear a $1 tag.
Her trash plan includes beefing up efforts to recycle in apartment buildings. Ultimately, she's advocating an 85% diversion target by 2012.
The other main candidate in the mayoral race, lawyer Stephen LeDrew, wants to score recycling gains by trying a new approach to the way trash is collected.
Planning to target apartment buildings first, LeDrew, the former president of the Liberal Party of Canada, wants to pick up trash and haul it to a location for processing.
He says there are different technologies that can be used to separate recyclable material in the waste.
"We need a mixed waste processing place," he says. "Then if we do that, that's another 300,000 tonnes that we have separated."
LeDrew would eventually extend the process to single family homes. His goal would be to recycle 80% of Toronto's trash and dispose of the remaining 20%.
No matter who wins the election, the city has a long way to go to make major recycling and diversion gains.
While there's little argument that residents have welcomed waste diversion initiatives such as the the popular blue box, it remains to be seen how they would feel about tough love measures such as the imposition of a bag-tag system.
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