The garbage hidden from view

[Acajack]

From what I gather Quebec has imposed a fairly aggressive waste elimination program on its municipalities.

I believe they had to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill by 60% by 2015, and all organics will be illegal in landfills in 2020. There are a bunch of other milestones that municipalities must meet between now and then and beyond.

In my city to-landfill waste (eg garbage) is only picked up every two weeks. Even in the summer.

For recycled stuff it is picked up every two weeks on the alternate weeks. You can dump anything recyclable in your bin, unsorted and even unrinsed.

We also compost and these bins are picked up every week though.

There are fines for non-compliance but so far I don't think it has been "policed" very much.

Everything still has not been rolled out though - at the office we have recycling but no compost at the moment. Not sure if apartments buildings and condos are fulled rolled out either.

During most two-week periods my family only produces about one large green garbage bag. Sometimes it's not even completely full.

[drew]

Originally Posted by 240glt

We generate about a safeway bag of garbage a week, mostly organics. We keep a plastic garbage can in the garage and put it out when it is full.. usually once a month. We generate about one recycling blue bag a week.

I do a lot of renovations, and I haul that waste to the dump directly. I try to make sure I sort my loads so that I can put all that construction waste in the proper areas where it can be properly recycled. I never have to throw it in the big pit where the unsorted waste goes

Huh - our cat alone generates a safeway bag's worth of clumping kitty litter waste a week.

The rest of us in the house usually half fill our rolly-bin thing in the back lane every week. The recycling bin gets filled to the brim every week as well.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by drew

The rest of us in the house usually half fill our rolly-bin thing in the back lane every week. The recycling bin gets filled to the brim every week as well.

That's about the same as us. Garbage bin no more than half full, recycling filled to the brim.

I still have one kid in diapers, so I'd say it works out to about 1.5 mostly-full black garbage bags a week, and then a tube of diapers from the Diaper Genie.

I'm usually pretty obsessive about separating my garbage, I feel guilty when I take the kids to McDonald's and all the paper/cardboard/plastic ends up going in the garbage there.

I feel like a lot of my garbage comes from what I regard as overpackaged items, although I guess if that packaging wasn't there we'd be returning a lot more broken products to the store.

[Airboy]

We have 2 bins, one for organic and another for general refuse. We also do blue bag. The bins get picked up on alternating weeks. I may have a full refuse bin once a month. the green bin is quite empty in the winter so may get emptied once every 2 months. Summers it gets emptied more frequently. The blue bag is picked up every week but it varies in size from full to half. Any large refuse I take to our Eco station and have it sorted there. Edmonton Metro region is pretty aggressive in reducing and diverting its waste. And most constructions site use the LEED waste reduction credits so they sort the waste on site.

[WhipperSnapper]

Shouldn't kitty litter and diapers be compostable?

Anyways, cheap fashion clothing that falls apart after one season is now one of the biggest polluters and we are forced into having larger wardrobes for all seasons . (and what is with all the single serve packaging nowadays?) So much for reduce and reuse.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Acajack

They don't have them where you live? Here they still have them at IGA (and Métro I am pretty sure). The packboys ask you if you want plastic or paper at the checkout.

i have never seen paper grocery bags during my London Years. Come to think of it, Vancouver too.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

We have a huge problem with garbage that is literally hidden from view. Hopefully this latest media attention will shame people into stopping...St. John's is still very primitive when it comes to garbage collection and recycling. The amount being recycled is declining year over year. We just put out black garbage bags, directly on the sidewalk or street, and cover them in a blanket or net (required by law) to keep seagulls from making a mess.

There are three people living in my house (myself and two tenants). We tend to have 2-3 full black garbage bags per week. The maximum limit the city will collect from a single house every week is, I believe, 8.

Also, there's litter absolutely everywhere, all the time. We're still decades behind the rest of the developed world in caring for the environment. I still even see people toss garbage out their windows while driving on city streets.

Wow, that's pretty shocking! Especially for an island. In Vancouver a house is allowed one garbage can, which must be obtained from the city to fit on the automated trucks. You can get different sizes though, but its now only picked up every two weeks.

It's interesting NS would generate so much less waste than NL per person.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

i have never seen paper grocery bags during my London Years. Come to think of it, Vancouver too.

I am pretty sure not all of the chains have them here in Quebec either. The low-cost chains like Super C and Maxi do not.

But IGA and Métro which are a bit pricier offer you the choice.

I remember I was a packboy in a supermarket in the late 80s when we first got plastic bags - we'd give a choice between paper and plastic.

I hated packing groceries in plastic bags. You always needed to hold it open, whereas an opened paper bag would stand on its own and was easy to fill.

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Wow, that's pretty shocking! Especially for an island. In Vancouver a house is allowed one garbage can, which must be obtained from the city to fit on the automated trucks. You can get different sizes though, but its now only picked up every two weeks.

It's interesting NS would generate so much less waste than NL per person.

Googled it to see how bad it is.

Nova Scotia generates the least amount of waste per capita of all provinces.

Newfoundland is just worse than the Canadian average, ahead of Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.

It includes non-residential waste, though. I bet were much worse for just residential waste.

Or maybe not. Maybe enough is discreetly dumped in harbours that we look great on paper lol

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Aggressive waste diversion, I think. Here's the per-person waste generated by province. Stats are a few years old, so I imagine this has changed somewhat. In particular, Alberta was a poor-performing outlier when these numbers were crunched, but I would guess they've improved since, with more recycling programs and the beginnings of a composting program.

That surprises me that we were worse than Nfld based on that video. Calgary has been recognized as cleanest city in the world numerous times including this year. Must be Edmonton dragging us down!

Edit: Alberta does lead in recycled bottles and cans iirc as well. Probably something to do with the deposit system which pays you 10 cents per bottle and can when you return it to the depot.

Also Calgary just rolled out full composting this year to go along with the mixed recycling bins we’ve had for a while now.

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

i have never seen paper grocery bags during my London Years. Come to think of it, Vancouver too.

Weird. Here the grocery stores have always offered paper or plastic. In recent years they talked about banning plastic but fell short and settled on a 5 cent deposit per bag to encourage people to bring re-useable ones.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I don't get why less than one grocery bag of garbage per person per week would be the lowest option. How does anyone actually discard more than that? I'd have expected the options would be:

A) Fewer than one/month,
B) 1-2/month,
C) 2-3/month,
D) 4 or more/month

I'd expect to see a bell curve peaking around B and C.

Not sure if this is a NS thing with us having more aggressive waste diversion, or if it's just another case of me being hopelessly out of touch with general society...

My garbage and recycling is picked up on a weekly basis. So, since I am the OP, I figured I would base it off of 1 week.

People have pets, kids in diapers, and some people just don't care enough about waste diversion.

So far, the first 3 are pretty even. I have left it for a few weeks, so it will be interesting to see how that changes.

I lived in NS, and even as someone who lived in an apartment with a bin to throw our stuff out, I still recycled. When I found out that you get money back on non alcoholic beverage containers, I did that too.

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Wow, that's pretty shocking! Especially for an island. In Vancouver a house is allowed one garbage can, which must be obtained from the city to fit on the automated trucks. You can get different sizes though, but its now only picked up every two weeks.

It's interesting NS would generate so much less waste than NL per person.

Does Vancouver not have blue and green bins for recycling and compost? My wife’s aunt is from Langley and regarded us as savages for not having composting in the past.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

Does Vancouver not have blue and green bins for recycling and compost? My wife’s aunt is from Langley and regarded us as savages for not having composting in the past.

Yes, we have both.

[vid]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Really, they don’t do curb side recycling there?

We do have curbside recycling here (unlimited blue bags every second week) but not enough people use it. The city has plans to implement a better waste diversion system, just not the money to implement it.

[Architype]

We can recycle so much in Vancouver (cans, bottles, paper, most packaging, and organics), there isn't actually much real garbage left. In a typical week I usually have less than one small grocery bag. But, where all that recycled material actually goes is a good question.

[whatnext]

If you want an incentice to recycle read "A World Drowning in Waste" in today's Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...=.b0ce468f34d1