I just bought two new garbage cans for last year's change in St. Albert's waste pick-up when the city limited me to one can of 60 L. One was for pickup, and the second was an emergency container in case I missed garbage pick-up day.
Since these new cans were not metal but plastic, I also had to build a new retaining stand for them so the wind would not blow them over when empty. Previously, we had two 30 L metal cans, but seldom used both because we never had 60 L of garbage.
On Dec 11, 2010, the city sent me a letter and tells me I cannot use my new garbage cans anymore and have to use two new heavy-duty toters designed for mechanical pick-up, which the city will supply at my expense via a raise in collection fees. One toter is for garbage and one for organics waste.
I have news for them: this is a total waste of money.
I have a compost heap, which gets all my veggie waste and rear yard grass clippings.
Front yard grass clippings are almost always contaminated by excrement from wandering cats and from some dogs allowed to urinate and defecate on my lawn. So I take these clippings, as well as fall leaves, to the organic recycle yard myself.
Therefore I do not need organic pick-up. My neighbours likewise have always recycled their grass clippings and leaves by taking them to the organics recycle yard. None of them to my knowledge have ever put grass or leaves into the collected garbage simply because they would not be able to afford to buy enough tags for such an extra amount of waste.
Also, many of those neighbours have a garburator under the sink and their veggie peels and scraps go down there. I also estimate that at least half of the working people in St. Albert either mostly eat out or eat prepared pre-cooked foods at home, none of which create any organic waste to be picked up from their residence.
What about those people who we see putting out a plastic bag with a just a tiny bit of garbage in it bi-weekly? Will they now too be forced to use and buy two such heavy toters?
Under these circumstances it is simply absurd to believe that the amount of non-organic garbage is being reduced by 50 per cent with the new organic waste pick-up and whosoever came up with this idea needs to seriously re-examine his logic and/or math credentials.
The final point I am again going to make is that the heavy mechanical toters might have wheels, but they will not roll in snow in our unplowed crescents or on gravel driveways. Many people (particularly the elderly) will not be able to get them from their backyard to the curb through fresh fallen snow or up and down steep or icy slopes from the backyard to the curb.
The city's hasty order for new trucks and toters will cost us millions, while the existing city trucks and existing garbage cans apparently are designated to become just more waste.
I do not know anybody who wants to buy thousands of used garbage cans from the taxpayers of St. Albert or anybody who would want used city garbage trucks that will be useless for our city without the needed tote lifter arms.
Is this the best we are getting from our engineering department, and is it a sound evaluation by council?
I hope not. It needs their urgent re-evaluation.
A.K. Zimmer, St. Albert
