Residents have caught on to the city’s new waste collection program quickly and have embraced the change, say city officials, but some residents say their acceptance could be more accurately described as grudging resignation.
It’s been six weeks since the city began collecting waste from the brown and green waste carts that were delivered to each household. The rollout has gone according to plan, said public works director Glenn Tompolski.
“We’ve definitely had our challenges but it’s everything we expected by talking to other municipalities that have gotten into the program,” he said. “I just want to thank the public for catching on so quickly.”
In the beginning, some carts had wheels fall off. The city also replaced one that got run over by a garbage truck.
The city has received about 2,200 requests to change cart size, and is now clearing up the last of those, Tompolski said. Most households are switching to a smaller cart but a surprising number have gone the other way.
“We’ve had some people move down and are now moving back up,” Tompolski said.
In the program’s early days, the city was sending a pilot truck in advance of its new automated pickers to ensure carts were placed correctly. That’s been scaled back to the point that a public works supervisor now does patrols only as needed, Tompolski said.
If carts aren’t placed quite right, the truck drivers will stop, get out and adjust them, but that practice will soon be dropped, Tompolski said.
“At some point in time we’re going to have to cut that tie and start maybe enforcing more … being more assertive with the residents,” he said.
The main issue for the city now is to continue educating the public on what they can and can’t put in their organics carts, he said.
In June the city received 5,000 inquiries about the program, said solid waste co-ordinator Christian Benson. About 70 per cent were neutral inquiries, 25 per cent were negative and six per cent were positive.
Call volumes have since returned to normal levels, about 10 per cent of the influx seen in June, he said.
Erin Ridge resident Joe Prins said he and his neighbours have accepted the program but that doesn’t mean they like it.
“In our little crescent it’s kind of like a general resignation. You can’t do a darn thing about it,” he said.
In the early days, Prins had his cart run over by one of the waste collection trucks but he punched out the dent and the cart is holding up well.
“The main problem with the whole system is it gets pushed up on you and you don’t get a choice what those jokers at city hall are doing,” he said.
Mayor Nolan Crouse said he’s hearing mostly positive feedback from people he encounters around town.
“When we get an email or a complaint, it’s usually just people that don’t like the program, period. We have had some of those in the past few weeks,” he said.
“Most of the feedback that I’m hearing today is straight up, “Hey, I love the new waste system.’”
