This summer, a new type of residential recycling container will be tested in some Montreal boroughs, with the goal of ultimately replacing the green plastic bins that are now used in most parts of the city. The new container will be made with “recycled and waterproof polyethylene fabric and extruded plastic,” reports the Gazette. “The bottom is perforated for easy drainage. It can hold 70 litres of paper, plastic, glass and metal. It has a hinged cover that retracts for easy emptying. You can carry it with one hand.”
Anyone who has wandered through the aftermath of a windy recycling day, green bins and trash strewn across the street, will have to admit that this is good news. What alarms me, though, is that even as City Hall considers a more sustainable replacement for household recycling bins, there doesn’t seem to be any effort to find a replacement for the public recycling bins that were removed from Montreal’s streets a few years ago.
In 2006, the city briefly flirted with the idea of installing advertising-heavy MegaBins, but deemed them inappropriate after a test run. (Toronto’s disastrous experience with MegaBins might have also had something to do with it.) At the moment, the only way for pedestrians to recycle their cans, paper and bottles has been to hold on to them until they got home. Naturally, most don’t do that, so garbage cans are usually filled with things that should be recycled.
The old bins were discarded because, made of plastic, they would often be mangled by snowplows, people rooting for bottles or drunken passersby looking for something to destroy. Last fall, though, I noticed that McGill has installed new recycling bins on its downtown campus, and they could probably work well in the rest of the city. Not only are they simple, attractive and easy to use, they are sturdy and made of aluminum. So why hasn’t anyone suggested using them on Montreal’s streets? McGill often seems like a bubble, but this is one initiative that deserves to break out.
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In chinatown (de la gauchetiere and st.Urbaine) there is currently a very interesting garbage bin. I think it calls itself the Big Belly or something odd like this. Not really related to recycling, but definitely related to new & improved(?) public bins. I wish I had a photo for you.
Yeah, that’s the Big Belly. It’s a solar-powered trash-compacting garbage can that was launched last spring as a pilot project. I saw them all over the place in Boston.
What I really don’t get about the east coast is why people think it’s okay to litter. It’s bizarre. People of all ages and denominations have no problem just throwing their bottles or wrappers on the sidewalk or in people’s yards. The culture is very different in the west coast. Not perfect, but most people are brought up learning that littering is bad. So it would be great if we had both public recycling bins and way more public trash bins, but some serious public re-education is in order as well.
Maybe it’s a holdover from a previous mayor’s (was it Jean Drapeau?) dislike of newspaper boxes and similar items. Residual anal-retentivism… I really wish there were bins everywhere. I always take items home or if I’m at or near school (Concordia) I recycle them there. If the universities can do it the city certainly could.
To whom would one write at City Hall?
The McGill bins can’t be emptied when students lock bicycles to the bin rails, which happens fairly often; I like the McGill bins, but that’s a design feature that would need to be corrected if something similar were implemented city-wide.
True, Sarah…and McGill is pitiful when it comes to providing sufficient bike parking.
Also, those recycling bins cost something completely absurd like $5,000 each. Such vanity is incredibly indicative of the current state of all things “green” in the world–who cares if it works, as long as the imaging is spot on.
I would say that the city altogether needs more bike parking – tons of non-McGill people park their bikes on the McGill racks on Sherbrooke (Music Building for example). I also don’t see how more spaces can be added to campus without going into the greenspace yet allowing enough space for pedestrian traffic, URABZ: the place is a park, not only parking. It’s good how the city started using some parking spaces for bike parking during the summer though (front of Cours Mont-Royal: Ste-Catherine and Mansfield). Given how the city (and Quebec universities) are hurting for revenue, we appreciate every gesture they make even though it’ll hurt them financially.
Re. price of the bins: Do you have any idea how expensive metal is now? People are stealing Hydro wire and manhole covers and church artifacts for a reason! I’d rather pay more for something up front that’s made of something sturdy than some piece of cheapo crap like the MegaBins that’ll be FUBAR within a year. Dismissing everything as ‘greenwashing’ seems awfully cynical to me. Think before you speak!!