Payback Time At Toronto City Hall

Comrade Miller's Green Plan has more to do with putting more green in city union worker's pockets as a means of paying them for their support than the environment.

Radical new steps in trash
Some answers to the many questions on the city's controversial pay-by-the-bin system
June 08, 2007
Royson James
City hall Columnist

It's either North America's premiere waste diversion program. Or a "stealth tax."

Or maybe both.

But the evolution of waste management in Toronto is about to take radical new steps.

It will save union jobs. Most people will pay more for trash in 2008, and after that we'll all be paying more. Larger families get dinged. And some argue it might spark an explosion in sales of garbage compacters designed to crush waste so it fits in tighter quarters – an essential element of the pay-by-the-bin system.

The proposal goes to city council June 19 or 20, but it has generated many questions to which we provide some answers.