Recycling: Green bins/Blue bins, no room or no one wants it?

[graybeard]

I vaguely heard that Calgary has ran out of room to sort the recycling and then I heard that no one, like China, wants it? Where will it go/usage?

Further to this, the cost for this service is going up in 2018?

Has anyone heard of this; if so chime in?

I personally know that the blue and green bins are picked up every Friday at my place. I fully cooperate with the blue bin, paper recycling. I usually accumulate 2/3's of a blue bin weekly.

I think the green bin is a seasonal service at best. I cannot accumulate more than a tiny plastic grocer bag for my weekly pick-up.
It bothers me that the COC can justify a weekly green bin pick-up of a bag less that half a pound; wages, wear and tear on a truck, fuel etc....

Hmmmmm?

[Scottmisfits]

I haven't followed much of the debacle about any of this however I do agree they need to restructure.

In my household we are 1.5-2 bags of recycling, sometimes 2 bags of compost and now we are very rarely a bag of garbage in a week. The only thing we need picked up weekly would be the recycling. But if there is no room to hold any more recycled product does that mean we are to heavy into packaging now a days?

[Twist]

There are also mountains of broken glass ready for recycling in NA.

The problem I see is, while a noble thought, and by practice, (I'm ok with the conservation and reusing), no one seemed to think this one through.

Most of our: Recycling, refining oil, and production should happen in this country. It is "cheaper" to go overseas with it.

Our federal, provincial, and municipal governments need to pull their heads out of their butts' collectively, and understand:

If they're going to mandate, institutionalize, and enforce mandatory recycling, they better have the infrastructure to deal with it in-house.

Time to keep the jobs, products, production, recycling, etc. within Canada.

It actually makes more fiscal sense.

[aulrich]

Yup January we get to pay the city 6.50 for the right to store thier useless, green cart for them.

The green carts are a dumb idea, considering anyone with half a brain knew 2 years ago that the city would be short cash at this point. did we rerally need another fleet of garbage trucks.

Also the city already had a way to handle most food waste already. it called Calgro it takes the solids from the sewage treatment and spreads as fertilizer on fields used for animal feed.

Run your veg waste through a garberator and it get digested and utilized.
The odd ham bone and left over chicken can just go to the land fill, it's not like we are hurting for space.


And yes China is starting to grab a brain and is stopping taking the worlds garbage. And besides that , you got to know it it happens in China it probably dirty ,dangerous and requires near slave labor. So we get to have that nice self righteous feeling that we recycled, but there is some poor SOB in China that gets to live in a trash heap and drink toxic soup .

[CaberTosser]

My step-Dad is in the plastics packaging industry and he noted something that was of interest regarding the recycling end of things. Formerly, plastics recycling was easy as the products would go into the properly designated materials stream and would be processed and made into whatever. Now that there are other types of plastic being used in packaging that are designed to bio-degrade they can contaminate the recycling stream and ruin the quality of the recycled product. Plastic that was once infinitely recyclable and re-useable is now being ruined by biodegradable plastic contamination.

[elk396]

What about all the doggie doo-doo? Cities are over run with dogs now, many have 3 per household, where would all the bags full of that go? Maybe dog owners should have to purchase a collection container with their yearly license ? Kind of like the carbon tax, the more you use, the more you pay for pickup? Would be fair to the non owner dog population. My green collection cart rarely is 10% full. Whereas my neighbour who has 3 dogs has a full one.

[wildbill]

What about all the doggie doo-doo? Cities are over run with dogs now, many have 3 per household, where would all the bags full of that go? Maybe dog owners should have to purchase a collection container with their yearly license ? Kind of like the carbon tax, the more you use, the more you pay for pickup? Would be fair to the non owner dog population. My green collection cart rarely is 10% full. Whereas my neighbour who has 3 dogs has a full one.

....now if one could only come up with way to turn that dog doo into lets say fuel or fertilizer then one might get rich! Back to the laboratory, muwahahaha..........

[calgarychef]

Our community was in the pilot project and we've been using the bins for years.
My opinion is its just a tax grab' sure it's well intentioned but governments screw up anything they touch. My buddy is an environmentalist for a huge oil company and he really knows his stuff, over 5 years ago he told me that the city didn't have a market for plastics and they were "storing" them at the dump.

[Reeves1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6e8JMC-hmo



:sHa_shakeshout:

[graybeard]

Our community was in the pilot project and we've been using the bins for years.
My opinion is its just a tax grab' sure it's well intentioned but governments screw up anything they touch. My buddy is an environmentalist for a huge oil company and he really knows his stuff, over 5 years ago he told me that the city didn't have a market for plastics and they were "storing" them at the dump.


There is such a gag order at chitty hall that no one will speak up about these atrocities, especially at election time.....