What others are doing

Posted by Magda
Hamilton council considers this week whether to adopt a one-garbage-bag limit in 2008. It's all part of a measure to divert 65 per cent of that city's trash from landfill -- the next step after that city opened its own composting plant last year.

I'm surprised by the number of Spectator blog readers who are in favour of this. Check out their discussion.

I'm curious what our readers think -- would such a measure be effective here? Would you be receptive to it?

Comments

[Edward Pickersgill]

People in most apartment buildings won't care much either way as they'll just keep right on sending stuff down their chute to be carted away by private contractors to only they know where.

Education is the key and citizen participation in the decision making (difficult though that can be when most citizens feel left out of all government decision making). One bag limits in front of triplexes would obviously mean three bags but how would the collectors know that all three bags did not come from the same residence? Or, if there are four bags in front of a duplex and three came from one residence what would be the result?

One bag per residence might sound environmentally friendly but is not necessarily so.

[Bruce Shapka]

First off, you have to define what goes into the “one garbage bag”. Is this bag the equivalent of our clear bag or does include all our “bags”

Once our new composting facility is up and running the green bags won’t have to be shipped out of country to be disposed of. We have to do better in sorting our blue bag. I understand there was some issue with glass.

In my neighbourhood (made up of single family homes) there is a range of occupancy. In some cases there is only one person living in the home. In others, the adult children are still living with their parents. There are a growing number of houses with university students. In many cases there might be up to five students sharing accommodations.

Just from the above, there will be a great variance of “garbage” produced. The concept of one-size fits all isn’t appropriate.

With our current system, we are moving in the right direction.

We just now have to work on the packaging problem.

[Magda]

Thanks for the comments.
Just for some more background... Hamilton is proposing the limit be one bag of trash equivalent to our clear bag, no more than 23 kg.
It would apply only to buildings containing up to five units. In a five-unit building, the bag limit would be five. No word on how they'd tell which bag(s) came from which unit.
The city would let certain households put out three bags -- for instance large families or families with more than three kids under the age of five.
They're also recommending households be allowed to put out three bags the week after Victoria Day, Thanksgiving and New Year's.