There's another garbage issue that has not been fully explored. Whatever happened to the pay-as-you-go philosophy trumpeted by the city as gold standard? While partially retained for regular garbage pickup, with blue bag and the proposed organics pickup, this concept has gone out the window.
Take the blue bag recycling program for example. It allows us to buy without heed to packaging and subscribe to as many papers as we want instead of getting our news through electronic means, etc., and throw it all into the recycle bin. We can put out as many blue bags as we want for the same price. What happened to efforts to encourage less use of materials, either paper, metal, plastic or glass packaging or newsprint? We seem to have transferred our efforts to expensive recycling for which the cost-benefit is marginal at best, rather than encouraging less use of these materials.
And, we soon will have expensive organics pick-up. Through this program, like the blue bag, council is saying to their constituents, “Don't use your mulcher when you mow your lawn or adhere to landscaping methods that minimize both organic detritus and the use of water and above all don't compost. Just throw it all in a big bin and we will take care of it all for you.” I'm sure the garden society folks are thrilled with this one!
So much for conservation and effective change, not to mention individual responsibility. Not only that, if you discard more, we spend more in fuel and environmental wear and tear to pick it up, not to mention having heavy trucks tear up the pavement in our neighbourhoods.
I've seen letters and comments to the effect that, “I don't buy a lot to recycle and I compost so why are you punishing my environmental actions?” If I am a careful purchaser and have little to recycle, if I create a minimum of throwaway organics, why would council not take a real leadership stance and reward these true conservation actions rather than encourage waste?
There is a relatively simple solution to mitigate the unfairness of these programs. The city could extend its pay-as-you-go philosophy to these other types of waste pick-up programs. By all means, encourage recycling by setting the per-bag or tote fee at less than what is charged for regular garbage. For blue bags, have a per-bag charge with stickers. It’s a simple and easy solution previously used by the city for waste pick-up. For organics, provide different size toters where the subscription level goes up with size, just as it will when toters are introduced for regular waste pick-up. But again, set the subscription fees based on the size of the toter, just as is done for regular garbage pick-up. And as an aside, get rid of the useless collection of organics in the winter.
Seems to me we already have the knowledge and administration in place to easily make these changes. Why not make the adjustments right away? It might deal with at least some of the issues raised by the current ill thought out plan.
George Valan, St. Albert
