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• Man guilty in bike theft case [ Globe and Mail ]
• Bicycle thief jailed for another 14 days [ Toronto Sun ]
• Accused in bike thefts ordered to return to court in September [ CBC.ca ]
• Call for more 905 bike paths after deaths [ National Post ]
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• TTC reviewing options for streetcar contract [ CBC.ca ]
• ‘Garbage police’ called rotten idea [ Globe and Mail ]
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• City trash-scavenging ban a ‘mean-spirited’ move [ Toronto Sun ]
• An inauspicious beginning [ National Post ]
Friday’s headlines
Read more articles by Monika Warzecha
11 comments
This is so funny… the city is fighting over who has rights to garbage!
What an abusive move, they should all be ashamed for even considering ticketing what is not even their property.
How desperate.
Obviously these mental giants haven’t got enough to think about in their jobs.
Actually, Jeff, the city owns whatever’s in a recyling bin once it’s out on the curb. This was validated when the city won a case against a junk company that was taking valuable metals like copper from the bins. So not only does the city think it has the right to the contents of recycling bins, that right was validated by a court.
I don’t know what the economics of this situation are but this city isn’t exactly swimming in money. So if they can offset some of the waste disposal costs but envoking their right to bottles and cans then I’m in favour of it.
kevin I’ve never heard that before. I’m sure many others haven’t either.
Regardless, it is taxpayers who paid for the bins, and it is still a desperate act by those who have greater issues to manage.
Perhaps, as this issue brings into sharp focus, those in charge might try a little priorizing.
Certainly infrastructure, health, safety, transit, et al have the potential to deliver far more bang for the time invested … if invested appropriately.
This highlights that the Blue Box system cant pay for itself as it is configured now. ie Aluminum is covering the cost of everything else.
Jeff, I know you think the city can do no right but if there is solid economic rationale for being tough on corporate scavengers (ie, enforcing the law will generate enough revenue to cover the cost of enforcement and add money to city coffers) then how can you be against it?
I lived in BC for a long time – there, everything has a deposit (pop cans, bottles, tetra packs, and everything that held booze). Those that go around and pick up these items (‘binners’), were the subject of much debate. However, unlike the concern about lost revenue, those opposed to them cited the loud rattling of the shopping carts and this weird bourgeois sense of not wanting ‘those types’ going through ‘my’ garbage… it’d be funny if it weren’t so sad.
There was also the debate that said, on the one side, “it’s good for the homeless/poor to be able to make a bit of change” while on the other side, “the poor deserve better than picking up garbage.” In any case, you would never see any of these items lying around the streets or parks. I knew some of these ‘binners’ that would come around and I would offer my cans/bottles to them. They were always happy to take them, and I didn’t have to take them back (no car). And, while I have no figures on it, I am certain that it considerably decreased the amount of these recyclables going to land fill.
this city is very weird about garbage. Look at how they refused to even countenance looking at a vacuum system for the Portlands development, which would have eliminated the house-to-house trucks (and the associated noise and hazards). I can only hope it wasn’t fear of antagonising the driver/collector unions. It’s one thing to look at and be sure it wouldn’t be a runner but they just flat out refused to touch it.
@ Mark:
I saw this system used in Stockholm to much success. I heard it wasn’t the City but Waterfront TO who didn’t want it.
As for the unions, I’d suspect they’d be into it. They would have less physical work to do as the collection would be done by compressed air suction.
Matt, from TFA, page 2:
“The system is known as vacuum waste collection, and it’s quickly gaining acceptance throughout Europe and Asia. WaterfronToronto CEO John Campbell became a convert to the idea some five years ago, when he saw the system in operation in Stockholm while on a sustainable-development tour. “We said to ourselves, If we are building a 21st-century city, this technology should be a part of it.†Yet since that day, WaterfronToronto has encountered nothing but stubborn refusal from city hall. Campbell even went so far as to propose paying for the system’s construction with provincial money and handing it over for freeâ€â€an offer the city refused. When it comes to trash, Toronto wants no part of the 21st century.”
ha! The folks I talked to in Stockholm who ran the system said the exact opposite to me.
I have no idea why the city wouldn’t want it, especially when building new neighbourhoods. Keeping garbage trucks off the local streets and having them only have to drive to one spot, rather than the stop and go, make so much sense.
maybe this will make a good article for the next issue of Spacing…
Much like the reason they don’t want to put hydro lines underground….they say it’s too expensive and too expensive to maintain….bull…it’s the unions my friends.
Anyway, as always, the City apparently has nothign better to do thatn sit around dreaming up more things they should be doing to spend my money. Leave well enough alone already. It disturbs me to see people going through my garbage not because I think they’re somehow invading my space but because I think what has this modern country come to…forcing people to collect a few errand bottles to feed themselves….maybe we need to think more about the “why” people are doing this than on the fact that they are.
If you really want to get serious about it, instead of charging the people that go binning…charge the morons that put the bottles in their recycling! And while we’re at it, put a deposit on cans!
Oh, please excuse me, I completely forgot, this really isn’t about recycling or saving the environment…it’s about the City making money.
government…ugh.