Garbage Truck Questions
I was watching a garbage truck trundle down the street towards me the other day and noticed that right after the worker tossed in the contents of a blue box, she picked up a green bin and tossed its contents in as well. As it passed by, I saw that it’s one of those divided trucks. Into the big “half” went the recylables from the grey and blue boxes; into the small “half,” the green bin bags. The last time I saw them use this kind of truck was for cardboard in the small half and the rest of the recyclables in the big half.
So that got me thinking: if all of the recyclables, including the cardboard go into the wider area of the truck, why do we still have to fold, cut, and tie the cardboard into tiny squares. Except for small packages, cardboard has to be bent against its will to achieve the perfect size. This requirement is insane, especially for those who have trouble with their hands or don’t have the strength to fold, cut, squeeze into the grey bin, or tie this stiff material.
But now that it seems that the garbage truck itself no longer imposes physical constraints for disposal of cardboard — the reason why we had to reduce giant refrigerator boxes to mass paperback size — I wonder why the city still requires us to heave and huff or to find a kind neighbour or hire a handyman to ensure the sanitation worker picks up our cardboard. Why has the city not reversed the fold-the-cardboard rule — or if it has, how come it’s been so ill advertised? It has already kindly told us we can dump all the recyclables together, including cardboard if it fits the dimensions of the grey box. Why not go that extra step?
Then I continued thinking, this time about the green bin. I am surprised at how many people have told me, including from Vaughan, that they no longer use the green bin. Actually they get rather frothy at the mouth when you bring up the subject. It requires too much energy, too much time, and is impossible to open and close for some. To make matters worse, I am not the only one who has seen a sanitation worker toss the green garbage bag and the green bin contents into the same non-divided truck. (I’m going to see if I can catch a garbage truck in action next week to confirm this.) The politicians rave about household recycling levels, but I am beginning to wonder about that. It seems to me (just from anecdotal evidence mind you) that people are far too busy to keep up with being the city’s miniature garbage sorting plants, and that although they’re all for composting, they’re reverting back to tossing it all in the green garbage bags. They just don’t have the energy to sort and be able to spend time with their family and get their work done, paying work. Others meanwhile — the elderly and the disabled — never started because it’s beyond their capabilities.
I go back to my original theory: that this is all about ideology, and not about reality. People are bad bad bad for consuming and creating garbage, hence the city needs to make it as difficult as possible to deal with the outflows of our sins. If they were truly concerned about recycling and composting everything possible, then they would build sorting plants, and let workers and machines sort the garbage from every single household and from every apartment building into recycling, composting, and waste-to-energy streams. That way we could truly and most effectively meet our diversion targets.
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I find it difficult in an apartment building as well. 1st off we have nothing like a green bin of course at all. They didn’t devise a way to make that feasible yet I suppose.
The garbage chute is easy. If something is too large you can also take it down and toss it into one of those large garbage containers. For recycling though of cardboard they have this slot cut into the side of one of the containers. (The top is bolted and locked) If you have a large moving box it is impossible, no matter how you fold it to get it to fit inside this stupid slot!! The cardboard ends up being too “tall” and so residents leave it outside the box on the ground. Always.
So we’re all hostage to the cardboard rule! I can’t remember where, but I read that there’s an apartment complex where the big bins have open tops and aren’t picked it up on the scheduled day, and every day garbage flies out and litters the area. If a helpful (and not-easily-grossed-out citizen) retrieves the garbage and puts it back, it flies out again. Garbage insanity reigns all over Toronto!
The crazy part is that we don’t have to bind up our cardboard. And once it is inside the slot (if you can get it in) it just unfolds and takes up huge amounts of space.