Cross-posted from Eye Daily.
By a vote of 26-18, city council approved a new pay-as-you-throw garbage collection system before breaking for lunch today. Instead of paying for garbage pick-up out of property taxes, this new form of waste collection will see residents pay an annual fee for the size of bin they fill each week. Those with small bins (which hold the equivalent of one big garbage bag) won’t pay much more than they do now. Get a bigger bin, however, and you’ll be paying a bit more each week.
The new system, which has already proved successful in a number of other cities around the world, including Vancouver and San Francisco, is expected to both motivate residents to cut down on the amount of waste they produce and raise the revenues needed to fund further diversion. Apartment buildings will finally get green bins; reuse centres that will take in household items such as furniture and old toys will be built; and adjustments will be made to recycling plants so that we can put Styrofoam and plastic bags in our blue boxes.
City staff say the plan will allow Torontonians to reach their goal of diverting 70 percent of waste from the landfill, extending the life of our newly purchased dump.
Here’s what a few councillors had to say about the new system:
Pam McConnell — It is not a question of how much money. The question we should be asking is how much we can divert. The economics of making this legacy decision is essential and it has almost no cost. What are we asking people to pay for this? Is it worth paying an extra 50 cents a week (the extra amount of money they will pay for one of the smallest bins) to have a future for our children? Or is it worth, for a larger family, $1.50 a week? For people who need 4 bags a week, it’s still only costing them $2.50 extra per week.
Adam Vaughan — This will establish a need for packaging laws across the province. People are going to start to look at the garbage they put out differently.
John Fillion — I reluctantly can’t support the financial structure of it. The people in my ward tend to be paying much higher property taxes, and they are dutifully recycling, but because families tend to be larger, they cannot get by on a small bin. They will just see this as an additional tax, and they don’t see that they are getting good services for the taxes they are already paying.
Howard Moscoe — Garbage collection in the City of Calgary is double what it is in the city of Toronto. If you went to a private contractor, it would cost more. It’s tough to make a political change. The truth of the matter is, we’re doing it for peanuts. People are prepared to pay and they’re prepared to do it. All these attempts to delay and defer are really extraneous. All the details will work themselves out.
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On a slight side note, I’ve got to say, I’m really confused by Fillion’s comments about avid recyclers not being able to get by with a small bin. This view has been expressed by many others as well. Even city staff say that they expect that less than 10 percent of households will be able to make less than one big bag of garbage per week. I live in an apartment in a fairly large house. There are three units in the house and a total of five adults (or six if you count the girlfriend of my upstairs neighbour who regularly sleeps over). Between all of us, we take about a bag and a half of garbage to the curb every two weeks, and (at least on my part) that’s without trying to be super garbage conscious. Does anyone else think that staying under one bag of trash per pick up isn’t as challenging as others are making it out to be? What am I missing here?
