Miller, The Garbage Emperor Needs Some Clothes
The point of government is to do in aggregate what we cannot do as individuals, the point is for the better off to support the less well off, or the less able. The point of technology is to make life easier for everyone, whether the busy, the poor, or the sick, and to improve upon old methods, whether the polluting, the noisy, or the slow. The point of being green is to live in a way that is less harmful to the earth, whether replacing finite resouces with infinite, changing the way of packaging, or rethinking how to deal with our garbage. The problem is that our current Toronto government thinks government is not here to help the individual, nor to use technology to improve our urban life, nor to be green in a way that makes sense. Toronto wants to get out of the business of government and into the role of nanny, and a real old-fashioned one at that.
Part of the fundamental purpose of property taxes is to deal with garbage, a service taken over by government eons ago because individuals by themselves are mostly unable to dispose of it in a sanitary and efficient way. Furthermore, the poor (no car), the infirm (no ability), and the elderly (no ability and perhaps no car) have even more difficulty disposing of garbage; thus the rest of society help them out through government. This is the premise. Miller doesn’t like it. Maybe because he thinks it means he can’t be green this way, or maybe because he snored through the history of government class.
According to the mantra of Toronto City Council, especially David Miller and that strange Works Chair Glenn De Baeremaeker, to be green means you must work very hard and spend a lot of money. Government can’t do it for you. Only in that way can you pay penance for producing garbage. Notice that the ones working hard, of course, are us, not them.
As usual, garbage is bad; incineration is bad, who cares how electricity is generated, it isn’t our bailiwick (oh, when oh when will the province step in and force them to do the right thing?); and Toronto can be green only when Torontonians are seen spending a good chunk of their day sorting garbage so as to appease the green gods. Has anyone set a stop watch when they start sorting their garbage in the kitchen, the bathroom, the front hall to see just how much time you spend on being green, knowing perfectly well all that so-called recyclable material isn’t being recycled?
Anyway, in an effort to pretend how we’re really not three-decades-and-counting behind the world, Miller and friends have devised a new way of throwing out garbage, or rather copied somebody else’s way (and why when they copy, don’t they follow the smart cities?). They want to change the way of paying for our garbage disposal, from paying through our property taxes to paying per size of garbage container, if I understand that right.
As I’ve written before, the current garbage regime is impossible for the infirm and elderly to deal with. You’re lucky if you’re rich as you can pay someone to sort, store, and dump the garbage for you. But you’re SOL if you’re poor, as most of the disabled are. Now Miller wants to make it even more interesting for us and for a new group: big families. He wants you to measure your garbage into small, medium, and large. Currently about $180/year of your property taxes goes to garbage (according to Toronto’s CTV news). That’s actually puny compared to what I thought it was costing us, given all the hoopla. He says he’ll refund that when they institute this new pay-per-size system. The problem with all this is that there is no new thinking. He still wants to use landfill. He still doesn’t get how onerous it is on anyone who isn’t perfectly healthy. And frankly it does SFA for making Toronto greener.
Want to make Toronto greener and cleaner? Then we need a complete change in thinking. Our politicians are stuck in an old, mucky rut, for they still do not admit our too much of our recyclables end up in landfill and still do not see garbage as a resource, one that can replace coal to generate electricity. The emperor’s new clothes stink.
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Amen brother, amen!
Also, I’m incredibly happy I don’t live or work in Toronto. I just visit from time to time and try not to litter.
Thank you for not littering! :D That’s a WHOLE other topic of how Miller has failed on the garbage front: the filth on our streets and the TTC. Sigh.
nice rant. i wonder if the average citizen spends all his time organizing his own garbage, do the greener gods actually appreciate that work? and how much is it actually costing the city to clean up mistakes in organization of garbage by the citizen. and is recycling really that much more efficient than disposing? what are they planning on doing with the organic green garbage? i haven’t read anything about that yet either.
Good questions! I don’t think the greener gods do cause they keep piling on more work!!
The city wouldn’t have to clean up mistakes by citizens if they would use the sorting technology that’s available out there. I wonder which is more expensive though…
Years ago when I could still garden industriously, I’d go on Toronto’s Environment Days to get me some free compost. I don’t know if they’re still offering that, or if they now have more to offer from the green bin program. It’s interesting the answers to your questions are not readily available, and the city doesn’t talk about such things much.
Can’t agree entirely. The green bins and fees on “garbage abusers”, those who produce more than their fair share of garbage per week, are steps in the RIGHT direction.
There is no silver bullet here. Incinerators, landfills on the moon, whatever. If Toronto produces less garbage it will have less to deal with. Two things that can and will reduce volume are eliminating organics from the garbage stream and using fees as a disincentive to produce more than 2 bags or some other set amount.
Organics can be collected, composted and even used for biomass for energy production. Eliminating the amounts, that people take time to separate, reduces fees for our land fills. Garbage Fees would mean fewer people would put stuff on the curb or pay for the “luxury” of doing so.
I for one don’t want a needless tax hike to pay for a European class incinerator. So far, SO FAR, Miller’s camp hasn’t gone this route for incinerators or for new subway stations. Green bins and Light Rail are compromise but not altogether bad solutions. A government working within their means is a welcome change. We probably should look into modern incinerator technology but there’s a lot of ground work to be done first. The problems aren’t all solved but we are going in the right direction.
The public DOES have to be part of the solution. If we get off our butts and pitch in maybe the city council will follow suit with some of your plans (incinerators). Not sure what you would have the government “do for us”. Do we need new garbage police to enforce good recycling and diversion? The public are smart enough to do the right thing or pay the price of being a “good citizen of the city” without some other level of bureaucratic hand holding.
Landfills are not equivalent to modern incinerators. Aside from the risk of leachate going into ground water — and no liner is full proof - landfills produce lots and lots of methane, a greenhouse gas, an air pollutant. Toronto put small pipes into their old landfills to exhaust the methane into the air, so that parts of the city won’t go kaboom, instead of doing the green thing and harnessing that methane to produce electricity. That’s only one of the reasons why I view Toronto’s green plan with a great deal of skepticism.
The other is that it is physically demanding to abide by their sorting rules and mentally challenging as well. Not all of us are as healthy as you and can do this. People with balance problems find it difficult enough to put their garbage in one bin, but to take their cooking detritus and put vegetable peelings in one then have to shift over and put packaging in another bin doubles their risk of falling over and breaking a hip. People with weak hands cannot open and close the green bin. People heavily fatigued from chronic illnesses cannot carry out one week’s worth of garbage or organic material never mind two of recycling. People with mental challenges cannot follow the convoluted rules unless they plaster every wall with post-it notes. That’s just ridiculous. Furthermore, this is all so unnecessary when excellent garbage sorting technology exists to do the work for us and better than even the most conscientious human, thereby allowing the disabled and elderly to continue to live on their own without stressing on garbage day, and I do mean stressing (one lady I know is incapable of putting her garbage out, so she has her help put it out, but her help is not there on garbage day so her garbage sits outside for several days before it’s picked up, but what choice does she have?) If the garbage was picked up as frequently as it used to be, the load to be taken out to the curb would be lighter and thus more doable, but more importantly, the city would be cleaner. It’s no coincidence the rat population grew and the flying litter grew at the same time as garbage pick-up went down. And it’s a fallacy that Torontonians aren’t doing their part. Some are not able, some don’t understand it, and the rest are fed up with having worked overtime to do their best and then hear that recyclables go into landfill on top of seeing our city council’s head-in-the-past stance, especially when they pissed off our neighbours by buying a landfill in 24 hours or less. This was not OK’d by the public, either us Torontonians or those who live close to the landfill. I hope the Natives win their suit in court and prevent Toronto from using that landfill.
The silver bullet we need is for our politicians to educate themselves. It’s another fallacy that green means punitive because that’s the only cost-effective way to do it and because we deserve it if we produce garbage. Nonsense. If our politicians would educate themselves, they’d realise that green can mean making our land, water, and air cleaner, while making money on electricity production and at the same time, not making garbage disposal such a big production. We pay them to do this work.
As for tax hikes, only the media and politicians think tax hikes are needed — it’s all part and parcel of the myth that “organic” means expensive and “being green” means paying more taxes. Perpetuating this myth allows politicians off the hook because no-one wants to pay more. A few of us know we don’t have to. Meanwhile, the real tax hikes come from programs like office renos: the Mayor is spending on his office more than half of what it costs to build a big-box store. What on earth for? City governments’ fundamental purpose is to deal with garbage, policing, emergency services, roads and public transit, water and sewage, and building permits. Everything else is gravy, including his office. This city is crippled by having to pay for social services, true, but the city needs to get back to doing well its fundamentals before spending on all sorts of other stuff. We pay taxes to do that which we cannot do as individuals; that’s why humans created governments in the first place. So why are we paying property taxes for diminishing garbage services?
BTW what we should be using is Canadian tech, which I’ve written about before: SUBBOR and plasma-arc. But as usual it’s hard enough to get those in power to wrap their minds around modern incinerators, never mind what’s available AND has been tested in their own backyard.
I agree that landfills aren’t incinerators (obvious) and that not all people find it easy dealing with putting out their garbage, recycling or green bin. There are lots of public services not besides garbage (not the least of all TRANSIT) that leaves some individuals outside the fold.
Can Toronto do more yes to improve our situation as far as “the garbage problem” is concerned? Yes. Is the current city council’s plan the final say what will happen? No, but it is a step in the right direction. The “solution” may be a band aid one at that but I think it still attacks the root of the problem by providing a disensentive to produce and put out excess garbage. Consumption is the key.
As far as funding goes it’s new taxes or re-prioritizing. Doubt the Feds, Ontario or Toronto City Council are going to change their current fundementals anytime soon. It’s great that after Dion’s surprise Liberal win that everyone is talking “Green” but so far it’s all talk. Like I said there’s no magic bullet here and the reduction along with technology are likely the answer whether it’s cogeneration, bio mass recapture or incineration.
I’m late to the party.
Talk talk talk asks: “Has anyone set a stop watch when they start sorting their garbage in the kitchen, the bathroom, the front hall to see just how much time you spend…”
You sort your garbage after the fact? I use a mighty tower of stacking bins and just put the blue- and black-box materials into separate containers to start with. That said, I think that my empty toilet paper rolls are escaping into the landfill, now that I think of it.
“…knowing perfectly well all that so-called recyclable material isn’t being recycled?”
Ottawa demoted some plastics from blue-box to garbage last year, on discovering that they were paying to have it hauled away and not-recycled in some overseas locale. There was a small uproar, though mostly over the fact that people weren’t able to put those plastics in their beloved blue boxes any more. I think you underestimate how popular the blue box is with the people — they may not know or particularly care what happens to their garbage, but they love to put it in that box.
“…doubles their risk of falling over and breaking a hip.”
If you’re actually worried about breaking a hip walking to the garbage can, even a city-installed personal universal magic garbage disintigrator won’t be enough.
Similarly, if you can’t get your garbage to the curb, your problem isn’t garbage collection policy. Your problem is that your days of being able to do your own chores are just about over — solving that means going a bit beyond garbage policy.
Swoonone says: “I for one don’t want a needless tax hike to pay for a European class incinerator.”
They generate electricity these days, so they pay for themselves, at least on paper. Of course, on paper, nuclear is cheap.
Talk talk talk says: “BTW what we should be using is Canadian tech, which I’ve written about before: SUBBOR and plasma-arc.”
I’ll believe it’s clean when I see it work. There’s a pilot plant that’s going to start operating very soon in Ottawa. Even if it’s clever enough to avoid sending lead and mercury into the air, it’s still going to emit carbon dioxide — on the other hand, so does hauling undesirable plastic all over the place to be not-recycled, and so do many other power generation techniques.
That’s OK. The lights aren’t off yet. :)
Good for Ottawa in being truthful about the recycling. Now if only Toronto was as honest. I’m not surprised at the uproar: People have always demonstrated being ahead of the politicians when it comes to green and wanting to do the right thing. Toronto staff are always unprepared for the level of response when rolling out a new program. What municipalities really ought to do if they’re serious about reducing waste is to band together and force manufacturers to reduce some truly atrocious layer-upon-layer packaging.
I don’t sort my garbage after the fact, but I do have to consult my calendar every week to figure out what to put out, which is stupid. Garbage shouldn’t be that difficult. I don’t know what Ottawa’s like, but Toronto’s sorting requirements have gotten ridiculous, and I don’t want three garbage bins in every single room, especially since modern tech no longer requires it. Mechanical sorters do a better job than humans. So why aren’t we using them?
“Breaking a hip”: aside from the fact that your suggestion requires people who can live independently with some help to go into long-term care facilities and so increase institutional care by astronomical amounts, my point is that garbage should not be so complicated that it puts an impediment in the way of a person who can otherwise live independently. For example, even halving pick-up frequency means that bins or bags that were once manageable are no longer, especially the blue box. We as a society need to look upon the non-perfect healthy with empathy, and not see it as OK when our governments put barriers in the way of independent living. I particularly object to this when there are choices and governments through wilfull ignorance and ideology turn their heads away, like a dog who wants to ignore their master. I see now why wheelchair users occasionally get a politician to use one for a day.
When I read of Ottawa showing leadership with that pilot project, I thought why not Toronto? Guelph did a pilot of the SUBBOR system years and years ago. CO2 is at least better than methane, Toronto’s emission of choice. They could capture that CO2 and have an endless supply of dry ice.