I Will Be Going For The Big Garbage Bin

Even though I am a one bag family but I can make some extra pocket change allowing neighbors who exceed their limit use my box. (the largest bin ($369 for 360 litres) costs only $1 a litre.)

Why has waste become a shell game?
June 06, 2007
Royson James

Guests at my house expect a paper plate-free zone; each guest, numbering 10 or 100, is expected to use the green bin; and my weekly routine is to root through the various bins and ferret out recyclables from the garbage bag.

So, I plan to take the smallest of the four garbage bins the city proposes to make available next year, even though the city secretly wants me to take the larger ones so it can get the added revenues.

Why? Because it is a good motivator to reduce waste.

But, in the back of my mind, I know that if too many of us do that – if we actually succeed in reducing our trash – we would make liars of the city's bean counters.

And if the bean counters fail in their analysis, they'll surely jack up the rates and we will all pay more, no matter how much we recycle.

At the core of this new scheme is a plan to raise more money for waste management – which I don't object to – and to do so as surreptitiously as possible so that there is as little accountability and outcry as possible. That is objectionable.

Toronto now diverts about 42 per cent of its waste and aims to get to 70 per cent by 2011. The new waste system that charges everyone separately for waste is designed to net the city an extra $54 million under the guise of reducing waste.

There are some things that are great about the plan, a lot good, and too much bad.