Tag-A-Bag Garbage Cure Worse Than The Disease
Long-time expert and municipal observer The Voter takes on the garbage tag issue.
What’s it going to cost to administer this program?
More clerical staff will be needed to process the purchasing and delivering of extra tags and plus there’s the enforcement people to count how many tags are on the side of the road and go through them to determine which are tagged and which aren’t.
Is the policing of this going to be dumped on the folks picking up garbage throughout the city? What will they do with excess bags? Just leave them behind? That will be pleasant for the neighbours on a hot summer’s day.
Garbage Program Is Garbage, Councillors: BENN
Is this policy only going to apply to people in single-family homes where the garbage can usually be attributed to the house at the other end of the driveway it’s piled on? Many townhouse and other multi-residential housing developments have a designated spot where residents place their garbage for collection. Who’s responsible if there are more bags than permitted? What about apartment towers?
There’s a point where the cure is worse that the disease and this garbage policy is tipped in the wrong direction.
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You raise an interesting point – “what about apartment towers?” With the city moving to more intensification and high rises, the less the garbage collection it may be doing.
Looks like a cash grab with a possible decline in revenue as we build more multi-unit dwellings. But in the short term we have to fund Lansdowne 2.0 somehow.
Toss in to the equation a couple of other details. Details that are designed to demonstrate that considerable thought has gone into this program. Not productive thought, mind you. But thought never the less.
Our garbage pail may not exceed 140 litres. I looked at ours. There is no indication of what the volume is. Will the curbside pickup crew decide that it is acceptable? When there is a crew change for a specific route, will what was once deemed acceptable be rejected?
The aforementioned garbage pail nor its less than environmentally friendly disposable green bag cannot weigh more than 33 pounds. Or is it 20 kilos? Both numbers have been reported in the media. I don’t know who made the translation error, but 20 kilos is more like 44 pounds. In any event, will there be a weigh scale on every truck? If not, will the city train the curbside pickup crews to determine the weight of each unit before they decide to toss it in the back of the truck or put it back at the curb?
On a side note, when will a different set of “make work for ourselves” bureaucrats present a policy requiring that the vehicles used in the curbside pickup be all electric?
Is this social engineering exercise just another battle in the war on lower density housing? Higher density (read apartment) buildings are not part of this program. Exempt because their garbage goes to a different landfill site.
Count on whoever works on this project to a) only be given a partial list of parameters they’ll need to ultimately succeed if the project goes ahead, and b) not think the solution through to the potential problems any solution will ultimately create, i.e. complete a full impact analysis. The best way to deal with this issue is stay the current course. By the way, are any of the people who actually remove our trash complaining about the current state of the nation ? I’ll bet my money on “likely not”.