Finally, it's recycling day
With the municipal workers strike in Toronto finally over, it’s finally garbage day in Toronto. In the first week the city is taking recycling and green bin (compost) material; next week they’ll take garbage and yard waste. As I walked to work this morning, I chatted with a few neighbours about how they dealt with the five-week strike. Most noted that they had much more recycling material than garbage. As I peeked in the clear bags (recycling overflow) that lined the streets in my neighbourhood, I noticed an interesting phenomenon: while one bag often had a lot of uncompressed boxes and cans in it, subsequent bags often had flattened boxes and cans, and there seemed to be fewer glass bottles and rigid plastic packages. Yes, Toronto, I think we learned a few things about how to handle our waste and what not to bring home.
One woman told me that a couple of her neighbours were sheepish about their lack of recycling (and bags of garbage) and asked if she would put one of her bags of recycling in front of their house. Talk about keeping up appearances!
Here is my recycling bin, waiting for the truck. I did have some extra recycling, shown here in the bag my new rain barrel came in. I could have held it until the next cycle, but it did feel good to purge out all of the waste along with my neighbours. (Besides, fruit flies found something among the recycling.) My green bin was almost full, but I’m happy to say that we still have lots of room in our garbage bin.
Did you do OK through the garbage strike?
Have you changed your mind about something you were going to bring home – knowing that you would have to dispose of it, or its packaging, later?
