Garbage changes will ‘be a shock for a lot of people’
Disposable diapers among the challenges
Changes to your garbage pickup are coming soon. Are you ready?
“No, we’re not,” said Julia Dieterle of Kitchener, who has a seven-month-old baby.
As Waterloo Region moves to every-other-week garbage pickup, parents like Dieterle are still wondering how they will manage the piles of baby diapers that will be hanging around.
“It’s not going to smell nice,” she said.
Disposable diapers contain absorbent gel and plastic backing, so they can’t be put into green bins. They have to go into the trash, which will be picked up only every two weeks, starting March 6.
Green bins for organic waste and blue boxes for recyclable materials will still be picked up every week.
Region of Waterloo staff are suggesting that dirty diapers be sealed inside a plastic bag within a sturdy bin with a tightly sealed lid.
The region is one of the last large communities in Ontario to move away from weekly garbage pickup. Analysis shows that more than half of what we toss in the trash now is recyclable or could be composted.
Restricting garbage pickup will encourage us to use blue boxes and green bins more, and that will extend the life of the landfill.
Many people interviewed Sunday understand all that. But they don’t necessarily like it.
“If you’ve got a large family, you’re really in trouble,” said Howard White of Kitchener as he and his wife ate lunch at a shopping mall.
His family hasn’t picked up the green bin yet, but White doesn’t like the extra expense of the changes. The compostable bags that go inside the green bins can be pricey. And anyone with more than the limit of four bags of garbage every two weeks has to buy a $2 tag for each extra bag.
“They’re forcing people to do something they don’t want to do,” he said of the regional government.
James and Florence Bushby of Elmira aren’t worried. They have a green bin and blue box already, and also a composter for the backyard.
Green bins can be smelly, they said, but the composter isn’t. And it’s almost magical to see carrot peelings and other kitchen scraps turn into soil, Florence said.
Meanwhile, Heather and Darren Blewitt of Kitchener
should be the poster family for this new program.
They put out only a quarter-bag of garbage a month, they said.
Pretty much the only things they throw out are Styrofoam meat trays and an occasional disposable diaper from when their one-year-old grandson, Ben, visits. (When he stays for longer periods, they use cloth diapers.)
Every week they put out three blue recycling boxes and also two green bins, where the waste from their three cats and two dogs goes.
Asked what they think of the changes, Darren said he doesn’t like the government telling him what to do, even though he’s already doing it.
“I feel like they’re invading on me a little bit.”
Heather said it’s about time the changes were implemented.
“They took their sweet time getting to this point,” she said. “There’s no need to be producing that much waste.”
But she knows that for many of her neighbours, the next few weeks are going to be a struggle.
“It’s going to be a shock for a lot of people.”
For more information about garbage changes, go to the Waterloo Region website at www.regionofwaterloo.ca and find “About the Environment.” Click on that and then on “Waste.”