10 ways to survive a garbage strike

There's a serious chance that my city, Toronto, will have a major garbage strike this summer. The last one was in 2002. It was a long, smelly one in the middle of a hot summer. Windsor is in the midst of a very long one.

Garbage strikes are more than an inconvenience, they're a health hazard. But they're also a good time to take stock of what we're throwing out and look for ways to clean up our act. With that in mind, here are some tips on surviving a garbage strike. What ideas do you have? I rent part of a house with a yard, so I'm particularly interested in hearing how these strikes affect people in high-rise apartments. Let's turn the comments section here into a running list of ideas on how to beat the stink!

1. Stop eating meat.
This is easier for the vegetarians, and there's are good reasons why most of us should cut our meat consumption, anyway. But in a strike it's a really good idea. Rotting meat scraps are some of the smelliest stuff we throw away. They're also the most likely to attract rats and create a genuine health hazard.

2. Get composting.
If you have a back yard, get a composter. In Toronto, the city sells them for $15. We're getting a second one because of the volume of garden and rabbit-related organic matter we produce. The first one has, in the past year, consumed enough material to fill many garbage bags. In apartments, consider vermiculure. That is, the fine art of worm composting. If you have kids, they'll love you for it.

3. Freeze!
For a short strike, put the smelly stuff in plastic bags (you may have to conveniently forget your cloth shopping bags one day to get some), tie them up and toss them in the freezer. You could save a little energy too, as food scraps have greater thermal mass than air, and so will hold the cold better.

4. Time for cloth.
As a parent, I washed a lot of cloth diapers. It's not that horrible an experience. They are a significant expense, though, so plan for it to be a long-term solution. In Toronto, disposable diapers can go in the Green Bin for composting. But in a garbage strike, they're going to get ripe awfully fast. I'd rather do an extra load of diapers every day or two than have a mountain of dirty disposables sitting in my living room! (Or, if laundry facilities are inconvenient or far away, hire a diaper service to do the washing for you.)

5. Reduce.
Easy to do. Look for products with less packaging. Buy fruit loose and avoid those clamshell containers - they're not recyclable in my city, anyway. Plastics are relatively easy to store, as they won't start to smell, but all the same, they're some of the bulkiest stuff to go in the bin.

6. Re-use.
A lot of our "waste" is quite usable. A lot of house-related stuff, from the end of a roll of tar paper to 2x4s and even toilets, can find a new home through places such as Habitat for Humanity's Re-Store. There are also places to bring partial cans of paint (because really, how long could you live with the beige your landlord painted all the walls?), furniture (checked out Value Village or Goodwill lately?), and so forth.

7. Double-bag.
If you can't do anything but throw something potentially stinky away, double-bag it. That will help keep the smell down and help prevent rodents from attacking the trash.

8. Postpone.
Now might not be the time to clear last year's freezer-burned Thanksgiving leftovers out of the freezer. You might also want to hold off on projects likely to create a lot of waste.

9. Use the phone book.
Find the numbers for by-law enforcement officers who handle illegal dumping. Garbage strikes lead people to do some stupid things, like toss their trash into local ravines. This is a dangerous, messy and downright uncivilized thing to do. If you see it happen, call the authorities. Write down the license plate number of the perpetrator.

10. Get out of town.
Yes, a garbage strike is a good time to go on holiday. You won't build a pile of waste in your backyard and you won't have to endure the stench of the heap being stored at the local park. Grab a tend, catch a train up to a nice provincial park and do some backpacking. Or take a bus up to the beach. If you're driving, maybe go visit your uncle's farm...and ask if you can make use of one or two of the garbage tags for his municipal pickup while you're at it.

While you're out in the country, take a deep breath, enjoy the clean air and try to remember the really crappy days that some freezing guy came and took away your stinky old diapers, turned a blind eye to that extra bag you'd set out, or loaded your old couch into the truck without complaint. And try to remember that, one day, the strike will end.

In the meantime, add your ideas in the comments section below.

What really does go in the Blue Bin?

Last autumn, the City of Toronto announced it was expanding its "Blue Bin" recycling program to add styrofoam takeaway containers and plastic bags. I was pleased by this announcement, as it suggests there may be demand for the products and it will divert a significant amount of waste from landfills.

But these are fairly difficult materials to include in the program, so the instructions in newspapers were a bit convoluted.

Plastic bags are particularly troublesome. Not all can be recycled and they can't be thrown loose into the bin. Thankfully, the city did post instructions for plastic bags and polystyrene on its website. Sadly, the changes rendered the natty card the city sent around earlier in the autumn obsolete, and since my computer is nowhere near my kitchen, I am occasionally left guessing as to whether an item is recyclable. Fear not, Torontonians, they have updated the card on their website. The one I need is here. It's now printing and will soon be appearing on the side of my fridge. If you're in a different part of Toronto (Scarborough or Etobicoke, for example) or an apartment building, they've got ones tailored for you, downloadable from this page.

When I went in search of the new chart, I realized that it's very confusing when it comes to plastics. More confusing than it really needs to be.

I also discovered that far fewer things are accepted than I'd initially thought. Most of the confusion surrounds plastics. The guide said that plastic jugs and tubs are accepted, but plastic egg cartons or berry packages are not. This seemed odd, since many of them have the same number on their recycling symbol. Why would a #1 PETE jug be accepted, but not a #1 egg carton?

To find a clear explanation, I ended up at the City of Ottawa's website. This site clearly explains that the symbols only identify the major component of the plastic. So jugs, which have a high density of PETE are what recyclers want, not the low-density egg cartons and clamshells.

When you're asking "Does this plastic container go into the blue bin or the garbage (or craft box)?" The simplest way to answer in Toronto is "Recycle it if it's a #1 or #2 bottle or jug, or a tub with #5 or#6. If it's not, chuck it."

So the short answer is no, you can't simply go by the numbers, and yes, you'll need the city's chart on your fridge for quite some time. Hopefully one day demand for recyclables will increase (perhaps once oil becomes more expensive again) so that more items will be accepted. Maybe then we'll have a nice, simple guide.

More trash talk

First of all, I must commend the City of Toronto for its quick response. I left a message with one of the project communicators for the new garbage program, and she called me back within an hour. When I'm not calling from a major newspaper, that's a pretty fast response.

She explained the program and pricing very well and cleared up some of the concerns I raised in yesterday's post. But I'm still not convinced that the system is universally fair and that it doesn't discriminate against people who live in small multi-family buildings (that is, places with 2-8 apartments... the city has a different program for what it calls "multi-unit" dwellings, which are larger apartment blocks).

First, the garbage fee is not being applied to the water bill, it will be part of a new water and waste bill. Still a lousy deal for tenants who pay for all their utilities, but I recognize that a minority of people who live in apartments pay their water bills directly. Then again, isn't fair treatment of a minority one of those principles we're supposed to consider as a society?

Okay, so each building pays for garbage collection through its property taxes. Under the new system, each building will instead pay a garbage fee, based on the size of its container. That fee is given a $209 rebate annually. Why $209? Because it's the average amount paid for garbage collection in the city.

Where this breaks down, from my perspective, is that not all buildings are equal. Buildings with two or three apartments often have higher assessments and pay higher taxes. Which would mean that the tenants will, under the new system, end up paying for garbage collection twice. Once with the new fee and again because the $209 rebate won't fully offset the difference that they pay indirectly through property taxes.

Each building gets the $209 rebate once, no matter how many units there are, no matter how many families live there, no matter how many bins they have (you can have more bins, you just pay more).

The city encourages "bin sharing" to avoid extra fees. That's a good idea, and the reason why I'll be sharing the second-smallest bin with my neighbours. That bin will cost us $39/year after the rebate. But if I didn't have to share with my neighbours, I could use a bin half that size... no, I wouldn't pay half as much ($19.50), but instead would get a $10 rebate.

If I lived in the single-family house next door and generated the same amount of waste as I do now, I'd be getting a rebate. So would my neighbours.

So I have yet to get an explanation that really makes clear how this system is in the least bit a fair one. If one of the experts from the City of Toronto is reading, please do use the comments section to set me straight, if I've got this all wrong. I'd rather discover that I'm wrong than feel that the city isn't treating tenants in small buildings fairly.

How Toronto's new garbage plan discriminates against renters

On November 1, 2008, a new garbage collection system came into force in Toronto. It’s part of a noble plan to reduce the amount of material going to landfill. Unfortunately, its implementation has been clumsy, and the program is highly discriminatory toward people who rent apartments in small buildings.

The city is sending out new garbage bins to all the buildings it collects waste from at curbside. For a single-family dwelling, it’s a sensible program. Get a small bin and you get small rebate. Get a larger bin, and you pay an annual fee, presumably because you’re sending more material to landfill.

Unfortunately, the city is charging based on the amount per building, not per residence. So, if the two single-family houses next door each generate the equivalent of one bag of garbage per collection (the volume of the smallest bin), they each get a rebate on their water bill. However, I live in a two-unit building and we are allowed one bin for the building. As a result, if each apartment generates one bag per collection, we have to pay a fee. In other words, the city will be charging each residence in my building a fee while giving a rebate to other residences on the same street that generate the same amount of waste.

This is patently unfair, and clearly discriminatory toward multi-unit dwellings. And, it’s worth pointing out, multi-unit dwellings tend to be more energy efficient and generally better for the environment. The city should be rewarding multi-unit dwellers, not punishing them.

But there’s one other problem with the new program. The rebates or charges are applied to the building’s water bill, not the property tax bill. Traditionally, charges relating to solid waste management are part of property taxes. In Canada, property taxes are usually paid by the landlord. Utility bills, on the other hand, are often paid directly by tenants. Shifting the cost of garbage collection to a utility bill means that, in many cases, it will be shifted to a cost borne directly by the tenants. And that amounts to a rent hike in addition to any allowable annual rent increase a landlord may charge.

That, and it’s a little hard to understand what garbage collection has to do with water and sewage.

Green Tenant will be seeking answers from city officials. Don’t turn to the pink tag line for help, as it’s just a call centre and has no answers. Do call them (416-392-2467) if you haven’t received a bin or pink collection tags, but be prepared for a very long wait. I was on hold for more than 30 minutes this morning.