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<\/h3>\n<\/h3>\nOK, so Toronto may be slow to build bike lanes. And our transit system could use a lot of work. And, sure, our mayor may not be bold enough to ask drivers to pay tolls for the use of some of our roads. But when it comes to diverting garbage, we Torontonians deserve a pat on the back, right?<\/p>\n
We have, after all, adopted the new green-bin program with such unexpected enthusiasm that the city has run out of places to process the organic material that goes into them. And once apartment and condo dwellers jump on the green-bin bandwagon, Toronto will be well on its way to meeting its laudable goal of diverting 100 per cent of its garbage from its new landfill by the year 2010.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, sometimes numbers can be misleading. You see, the goal of diverting all of Toronto’s garbage only refers to the trash that the city is responsible for collecting, which, according to Geoff Rathbone in Solid Waste Management, is only about half of the waste that is actually produced in our fine municipality. The other half, generated by businesses that operate in spaces larger than 500 square metres, is regulated by the province, and handled by private disposal companies. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When [provincial regulations requiring basic recycling] first came out, they were really well enforced,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Rathbone tells me, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but over the last decade people have slacked.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (This might explain why many fast-food restaurants can get away with not providing recycling in their stores.)<\/p>\n
So when the mayor talks about diverting all of the city’s garbage, he’s really only talking about diverting half of the trash that Toronto makes. Rathbone says the city has little control over what companies that are regulated by the province do.<\/p>\n
When the city first pitched the coordinated street furniture program to the public, it promised to reduce the total square footage of ad space that currently appears on benches, bus shelters, garbage cans and other pieces of sidewalk infrastructure. But street furniture aficionado Jonathan Goldsbie says the program may actually increase the amount of advertising on our streets by 10 per cent. When the Request for Proposals (RFP) went out last spring, the city estimated there to be 198,200 square feet of street-furniture advertising already on the streets and the RFP specified that advertising levels be no greater than this number.<\/p>\n
After the RFP was issued, however, the city gathered more precise data. Based on these numbers, Goldsbie has calculated that the current amount of ad space, in fact, equals 177,958 square feet. This means that if the company that wins the contract uses the maximum amount of advertising space allowed (and why wouldn’t they? Cha-ching!), our sidewalks will see more advertising, not less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"