Great news out of Scarborough. Residents in the city's eastern precinct are recycling like crazy – a 10 per cent jump since the invasion of the new recycling monster bins this spring.
And in a development that cuts both ways, they seem determined to avoid paying for garbage pickup.
Scarborough residents were the first to get the new big blue bins. And this past month, even as some Etobicoke residents are still to get the recycling bins, Scarborough has been selecting which size grey garbage bins to order, a critical decision because the bigger the garbage bin, the more you pay.
Apparently, four out of every 10 Scarborough households placing an order for the garbage bin have picked the tiniest bin that holds the equivalent of just one regular green or black bag of trash. That means 40 per cent of the residents are betting they can limit themselves to one bag of non-recyclable trash every two weeks.
While that sounds like good news all around – less garbage to the dump, more diversion, quicker drive towards the city's 70 per cent diversion target, and a $10 "thank you" coupon from the city instead of paying for waste disposal – this is a mixed blessing for the city.
The more people opt for the tiny bin, the less money the city gets to finance the entire waste management system. The garbage hogs with the massive bins holding more than four garbage bags of trash must pay $190 a year. The virtuous that choose the smallest get a $10 refund from the city.
City staff initially predicted 10 per cent of the people would choose the tiny bins, a reasonable expectation considering that the current limit is six bags per pickup and going from six bags to one bag overnight would be revolutionary.
By the time the final report came out this year, city staff had tweaked their estimates to cover the possibility of 20 to 30 per cent choosing the small bins. (This they did by jacking up the fees for the large and extra large bins to ensure the city would get its $54 million from the plan.)
But based on numbers from Scarborough, 10 per cent picked extra-large, 20 per cent large, 30 per cent medium and 40 per cent small. That could leave the city with a shortfall, if the rest of the city follows Scarborough's lead.
So, are residents being overly optimistic? Can they actually cut their trash to one bag every two weeks?
Councillor Glen DeBaeremaeker, chair of the city's works committee and environmentalist extraordinaire who says he wants to see the garbage can extinct, picked the medium-sized waste bin for his two-person family.
"They'll either be the greatest recyclers or they are overly optimistic about what they can do," DeBaeremaeker said, calling the choice of the one-bag bin "insanely optimistic. I can't see a family going from four bags to one that quickly, but I'd be the happiest works chair if it happens."
Several issues may have contributed to the rush to the small bin.
One, cost avoidance. Nothing alters behaviour like a hit on the wallet.
Two, false expectations. A cursory look at the tiny bins shows they're the same size as the medium bins, which are about the size of the current garbage cans that hold two bags.
That might have fooled some people who don't realize that while they're identical on the outside, the inside of the city's small bins have been altered to reduce capacity to just one bag.
1 comment:
apparently someone missed the fact that one can buy garbage bag tags...
so many facts, so little time. I know.
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