The Toronto Star: City Hall

Mega blue bins on way to your curb

Recyling buggies hold 6 times more Council votes to spend $28.5M

Toronto householders will get big blue recycling bins on wheels to replace their blue and grey boxes, city council has decided.

Councillors voted unanimously yesterday to spend $28.5 million to buy the recycling buggies for more than 540,000 Toronto homes.

The new bins hold about 295 litres — about six times as much as a blue or grey box — and will be wheeled out starting next fall.

Householders won't have to pay for the bins, which the city estimates will cost $48 each. It has yet to decide what happens if the bins get broken or stolen.

After giving them a trial run in Scarborough , works officials figure they'll increase the amount of recyclable material collected by about 15,000 tonnes a year. The city plans to add polystyrene foam and plastic bags to the recycling stream in the next year or two.

Councillor Shelley Carroll, who chairs the works committee, said residents who used the big bins in a pilot project were reluctant to give them back.

One of the few skeptics about the new bins was Councillor Mike Del Grande (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt).

He noted that single-family homes divert more than half their waste from garbage dumps though recycling and composting, but residents of highrise buildings divert only about 13 per cent. Del Grande said it would be better to spend money on programs that help highrise residents to compost or recycle — and noted that in the last budget, city council cut $45 million in proposed waste-diversion programs that would have done exactly that. "A major portion of our residents live in highrise units and we're going to ignore them," Del Grande said.

Carroll (Ward 33, Don Valley East) said the city needs to reduce its waste so urgently that it would be unwise to pass up any opportunity. "You've got to move on the ones that are ready now."

Councillor Gay Cowbourne (Ward 44, Scarborough East) said it's a good idea to have a single, simple container for all recycling.

"My husband is an intelligent man, but he still gets confused about what goes in the blue bin," she said.

The big bins have been tested in Scarborough , but works staff will carry out more trials in downtown neighbourhoods with small lots, no driveways and narrow sidewalks to see if they work in a cramped inner-city setting. They'll report back to council and propose alternatives for dense downtown neighbourhoods if the bins don't work as well there.