Update: If you don’t like your new blue bin and want to have a better solution: “Target70 will book a home appointment so you can use a combination of several smaller bins which would be a lot more manageable.” E-mail them.
The City of Toronto dumped a very large, lidded blue box on my property. It takes up half of my front walk. It would take up the entirety of the walk down the side of my house if I could move it. Having little functional strength in my upper body, I cannot use it. Raccoons can open these city bins easier than I can, and it’s too tall for me to use my body to close it. The city’s garbage policy is threatening my independence. To make matters worse, the City will be dumping on us a matching bin for the garbage in a few months, and it will be charging most of us twice for picking up garbage — once through our property taxes and once as an extra surcharge.
Where are you going to be putting your very large blue bin, your matching garbage bin, and your green bin? (And no, the new blue bin isn’t for all of your garbage, just recycling.) Is it going to be a choice between your car or your garbage as to which goes in your garage, if you have one? Will you be switching from a frontage of lawn and flowers to garbage? And that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to problems these bins are producing without even making one single dent in the total amount of garbage we put out (and yes, recycling is garbage, it’s the waste product of our consumption). I know I’m not the only one outraged at this stupidity. If you protest the idea of the City telling you to put your present bins in the garbage, use their bins, and pay twice for it, then the time to act is now.
How?
Easy. Just click on the link below and print:
Put this sign — in PDF format — on your new blue bin, cover it with plastic, tape it down, wheel your bin onto the sidewalk permanently, and do not use it. It’s the easiest form of protest there is. It’s passive. It doesn’t require you to march or to take your garbage to City Hall and dump it there. It’s only a matter of printing, taping, and moving the new bin ONCE to its home on the sidewalk. City property belongs on city property. Continue to put your garbage out in the way you always have. Better yet, put your garbage in green bags, your recyclables in clear bags, and compost in those special bags. Even better, put all your garbage, no matter what it is, in one bag every week. The garbage collectors put it all into the same truck anyway. Do this until the City of Toronto gets the message, and Council backs down and starts dealing with the garbage issue in a way that’s both human friendly and environmentally friendly.
If you don’t have Adobe Reader to download and print the sign, you can download Reader here for free.
