You can win the war over city’s big bins

By Eric Morse —

It’s rather like the weather. Everybody complains about the garbage bins but nobody ever does anything. Since the Day of the Bins hit the Downtown neighbourhoods, there has been a storm of complaints about the aesthetic disfigurement of streetscapes and the inconvenience caused to elderly, infirm or side-access-deprived residents of Cabbagetown, Corktown and related heritage neighbourhoods.

In these areas, property and housing are simply not able to accommodate recycling and garbage bins designed for suburban residences with wide driveways and garage access. They are a definite disfigurement, especially on pickup days when they line narrow streets with on-street parking (and snow banks, in season) like a row of cockeyed altars to the Cold Grey Garbage Gods. And on non-garbage days, far too many live permanently in front gardens and on porches.

But in perhaps most cases it doesn’t have to be this way. The policy is a good deal more flexible than many people realize.

It is certain that the bureaucrats at city hall chose the most ham-handed, Procrustean approach to implementation possible, leaving many residents with that queasy “resistance is futile” feeling. In the words of Wellesley St. resident and journalist Bob Hepburn: “The city forced the bins on us, whether we wanted them or not, and then left it to us to go through what can be a tiresome process of sending them back and opting for bags. It was like the negative billing of a few years ago by cable TV firms, just this time it was by the city and with recycling bins.”

But however convoluted the procedure, there is relief. Downtown councilors realized early on that there would be grave difficulties with the program. A motion by Toronto Centre-Rosedale’s Pam McConnell at the council meeting of June 20-22, 2007, called for city staff to “work directly with the local councillor and residents to implement the new cart system in a way that addresses the challenge [of locations with no reasonable provision for bins].”

What this means in practical terms for Downtown neighbourhoods was explained in McConnell’s newsletter of November 25, 2008: “If you cannot reasonably accommodate your blue and/or grey bin, you have a storage and placement issue and should contact Solid Waste Management.”

Many streets in the Downtown neighbourhoods, like Alpha Ave. in Old High Cabbagetown, have no reasonable access to street fronts for bins at all. The residents of Alpha took successful pre-emptive action, not without some misadventure along the way.

Resident Joann McLennan explains, “Several months before the bins were to be delivered, Pam McConnell held a general meeting at the local school. Two of us from Alpha attended the meeting. It was the first time we had seen the actual bins, and the reps from solid waste told us that every household would be getting bins, period.”

“Two of us marked ‘no bins’ for each address on our street, on a response sheet from the councilor’s office.” McLennan continues. “A few weeks later, waste management showed up on our street. They were bug-eyed when they saw how small the street is. Then, Sam Nicolosi from solid waste management showed up to tell me we would not get bins. But later, the bins were delivered. We called Sam and the bins were taken away. [After a few scattered incidents] we have been bin-free to this day.”

McLennan adds that waste pick up is also handled on an individual basis. A friend was told by solid waste that she could leave her bins on her front porch (instead of carting them out to the curb, which is mandatory city-wide) and the garbage truck operator would empty them and return them to her porch.

In getting their exemption, Alpha Ave. residents established a strong working relationship with Sam Nicolosi, the contact supervisor of the bin implementation team at solid waste management. Such relationships—at a street or neighbourhood level—are often the key to problem-solving.

The major issue remains that the bins were imposed wholesale, and solutions have to be found retail and after the fact.

“People have either been put off or they don’t know that they really do not have to put up with these bins,” says Gail Murphy of the Cabbagetown South Residents’ Association (CSRA).

“They truly can get exemptions. The thing that really is such a pain is that it would have been so much better if the city had decided to exempt neighbourhoods in advance.”

Don Purvis of the CSRA suggests that the case-by-case corrections now taking place are very unwieldy and that a street-by-street reassessment by solid waste in consultation with neighbourhood associations would be preferable.

An additional problem is that many Downtown residents are tenants, while the bins program deals only with landlords, many of them absentee. This leads to confusion and inertia.

McConnell’s newsletter also points out that there are in-between solutions such as using a single bin weekly. A sticker is applied to the garbage bin to indicate to collections staff that the bin is serving two purposes.

›To move to the one-bin solution, residents can contact solid waste management.

Individual eligibility for bin replacement solutions requires a site visit from solid waste.

To arrange a site visit to resolve storage and placement issues call 416-392-2467 or contact your city councillor.