Is there any other city in North America with such shitty garbage collection service? Here’s what I get for my tax dollars (and, jeez, that’s a lot of dollars):
glass and paper recycling pickup every two weeks
garbage pick up every two weeks (6 bag maximum) (alternates with recycling)
So, if once or twice a year, I put out seven green garbage bags, do they take six (the limit) and leave one? No, the fuckers leave all seven.
And, if, in order to keep the god damned raccoons out of the special green bin[sup]TM[/sup], I tie it closed with bungee cords, will the garbage men take off the cords? Hell no! They leave the bin untouched and untaken. ‘Bungee cords on? No pick up for you!!’ Give me a break. What, they can’t risk removing the cords? For chrissakes, I take them off all the time and I’m not wearing thick, protective glvoes. What’s their problem?
Of course, in addition to leaving me with rotting, stinking “organic” garbage for another week, the charming practice of not picking up my green bin also leaves me with nowhere to put this week’s organic garbage. The green bin can only hold so much.
What’s that you say? That I shouldn’t use bungee cords. Shall I describe the mess, the revolting pile of moldy leftovers, the distinct unpleasantness of cleaning up after the racoons have helped themselves?
All of which reminds me - why the fuck can’t they come up with a lock or closing mechanism that’s smarter than the raccoons? That doesn’t need bungee cords.
Why don’t you just take the bungee cords off the morning of trash collection?
I have to pay for private trash collection, so I don’t really feel sorry for your tax-paid service. If I put out 2 cans, they charge me for 2. 7 cans, they charge for 7. If I put bungee cords on the cans, I’m sure they’d tack on a “bungee-cord removal fee” for that. Since your trash collectors can’t do that, I can see why it’s easier for them to just move on to the next house instead.
A fair question. And, in fact, if I’m up and out early enough, that’s what I do. BUT, they collect the garbage early, often before I’m up and certainly before I’m out (around 7 AM), and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna wake up an hour early to take off the cords.
Of course, if I take them off the night before, I’ll awaken to one huge raccoon-induced mess.
Hey, at least you have compost collection. I live in an older apartment building and we know nothing of such things. We have to compost it ourselves, or heave it in the dumpster. And we have to hike out recyclables out to big communal bins, too.
Disguise a live trap as a special green bin. Lay it out overnight to catch the racoon, and the next morning insist to the trash collector that because it is organic and in a special green bin, it must be collected.
Toronto garbage is the most ridiculous system I know. Every fortnight, when I visit my sister, I return home with a truck full of garbage to deposit in my condo’s industrial bin. I’ll pick yours up, $50.
Upon which they’ll just have to find a spot in Ontario, most of which is uninhabited. I’ve never understood why Toronto ships its garbage to Michigan. Probably because it’s stupid, which is the way Toronto City Hall does things.
But, that said, the OP is right. Toronto is a terribly managed city in almost every respect, and it’s starting to get dirty.
I used to live in the City of Toronto but worked in the City of Mississauga, and my drive was twenty minutes, exactly ten in Toronto and ten in Mississauga. If it had snowed the night before, I’d start out driving on a road that was completely unplowed; I may as well have been off-roading. And this was a fairly major east-west route. The instant I hit the Mississauga border, the street was clear, freshly plowed, and sanded/salted if need be. Every single time.
You must’ve taken a route into Mississauga that did not go by my old house there. We lived on the border (QEW/Dixie), and we rarely got plowed - we called the city and were told that our street “was not a priority”. And since there were no sidewalks on our street either, any sort of transportation out of the house was fraught with danger.
And now that we’ve moved to Burlington, no one plows our street here either! The hell?
Aw well, it is still better than Toronto. They suck.
I don’t get it. I live in Toronto and have had none of these problems. I produce maybe one bag of garbage a week, and I compost.
Maybe if you didn’t buy so much crap that turned into garbage (usually packaging), you wouldn’t have so much to put out?
Can you compost the green stuff yourself? I live in an apartment and I can still manage a bin on the deck. 'Course, I’ve got a big deck. But anyone with a yard should be able to do it.
Toronto should charge by the bag for all residential garbage pick-up they way they do for businesses (you know those yellow bags?) That way people would have a financial incentive to reduce household waste as much as possible.
Agreed that the apartment/condo situation is ridiculous. There needs to be a way for those high-rise dwellers to separate their waste.
Also agreed that those green bins need to be more racoon-proof. But those clever buggers will quickly find their way into any racoon-proofing techniques that us mere humans might come up with, and they will laugh maniacally while they do it.
I’m dreading the day that troops of bandits (filled with green bin energy), in coalition with the black squirrels in Queen’s Park and the fearless french-fry-fattened seagulls, rise up and take over the city.
WE are not extravagant, nor are WE wasteful. WE produce a fair bit of “organic” garbage each week (and, if you include the dog shit, it becomes a LOT). WE are more than one person and wonder if you realized that four produce more waste than one.
(My comments about the seven green garbage bags were to illustrate an inflexible system. Except for post-Xmas and after semiannual clean-ups, we almost never put out more than 2 green bags).
Stupid Torontonians! Buy yourself some goats. Then instead of wallowing in your own filth you could be converting it into delicious goat meat! I’m sure I saw a goat tax credit in the recent federal budget.
Toronto Council and teh Mayor are a group of morons. The biggest claim to fame they can show so far is when they point to the island airoport and say “See?”
“What? I don’t see anything”
“Exactly we’re responsible for the bridge that isn’t there!”
I moved awy last year and I’m glad. They are totally screwing the city with hairbrained ideas and policies so short sited they are killing the city.
Too much dirt?
We’ll instigate a clean up day. Get the kids out there to pick up used condoms, and medical waste.
Traffic problems?
Widen the streets for the streetcars and give teh busses teh ability to change the lights like the fire dept.
The Transit system is a terrible substiute for driving?
Raise the parking fees and make the city impossible to move in now the same crappy tranist is supposedly more attractive.
Grabage problems?
Well none of that ecologically unsound ideas like burying in an old abanded mine or incinerating it. Nope get hundreds of trucks spewing exhaust to carry the stuff a few hours down the road to Michigan.
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