Bin temper tantrums such a terrible waste

Winnipeggers have reacted to the arrival of the new 240-litre garbage bins as though the city told them they have to paint their houses red, replace their fences with hedges and swap their BBQs for vegetable gardens.

It's outrageous! City hall should take the darn things back! We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore! In fact, a handful of protesters returned their bins, apparently unaware that none of their trash would be picked up if they didn't use them.

This isn't an issue of civil rights. It's a practical solution to a long-standing problem. They're cheaper for the city to pick up and all the garbage will end up inside the truck instead of strewn through the neighbourhood. There's no chance you'll have to wander the back lane looking for your garbage cans, dented and bashed. No, not even on a windy day.

The city is going to give you a jumbo-size bin. You can keep it outside your house or in your garage. On garbage days you wheel the bin out, it will be dumped and you wheel it back in. If you're infirm they'll pick it up at the door for no extra charge.

So where's the controversy?

Well, the first objection was that some people didn't think 240 litres was enough room for all their garbage. As the Free Press told you Wednesday, a heavy duty garbage bag holds 72 or 80 litres. That gives you three large bags stuffed full each week. As long as you're not throwing out major appliances you'll be fine.

(An exception might be families who use diapers, both baby and adult size. There's got to be a workable solution although it shouldn't cover households that simply claim they're going through Pampers at a record pace.)

The size of the bins should be sufficient for most families if they also recycle. If they don't, they'll have a problem. That's part of the point of this exercise.

Some people don't like to be told what to do. It could be recycling or curbside composting or not parking in a handicapped spot. Change is hard. Forced change is even harder.

But we're already moving in the right direction. Last year, Winnipeggers recycled 44,375 tonnes of material. We threw out 230,916 tonnes of garbage. That makes us enthusiastic recyclers, according to Barry MacBride, the city's director of water and waste department.

"I think it's a minority who don't want to do it at all," says McBride. "Most people are avid recyclers. Some people still get insulted by the idea."

MacBride has an answer for most objections to the new bins. Can't fit your grass clippings in the bin? Leave them on the lawn. Have a lot of leaves to deal with in the fall? We already have a composting program to take care of them.

Don't think you require a large blue bin, a program that will be phased in starting in September? MacBride says evidence proves people will recycle more if they have more room. If they've got one or two small bins to fill, that's all the recycling they're going to do. The rest goes in the garbage.

Part of the perception problem is the flip-flopping at city hall. On Wednesday, Mayor Sam Katz said he'd be open to the idea of allowing residents to purchase a 360-litre can. Their other option, he mused, might be to buy two of the 240-litre cans.

Their other option should be producing less waste and not buying their way into a larger container. Couns. Harry Lazarenko and Dan Vandal voted against that option Tuesday. The mayor's wishes shouldn't rule the day.

Instead of offering people an easy way to keep producing trash, the mayor should be putting his weight behind a curbside composting program. We can't keep accepting planned obsolescence, buying and discarding every shiny object we see. We can't pretend all our trash is going somewhere benign. They teach kindergarten kids to reduce, reuse and recycle. The rest of us need to get with the program.

Winnipeggers may think this new waste management system is too hard. What we need to worry about is whether it's too late.

lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 11, 2010 A5