Last Updated on: 21st April 2015, 05:28 pm
I’m not sure if Guelph city council didn’t think its cunning plan all the way through or if thisarticleomitted something, but I’m left with a few questions either way.
Eliminating plastic bags from the garbage collection process is a fine idea in theory, but I’m not sure how the execution is going to work. I suppose it’s great if you’ve got a house, a yard, a garage and room to put things, but what about folks like Carin and I who live near the top of an apartment building or people in townhouses with outside property so small you can spit and hit the guy 3 doors down? Where exactly are we supposed to store 3 gigantic collection bins? We’re lucky enough to have a decent sized apartment, but there’s no practical place to put them in here. And even if there was, if you think I’m letting a vat full of food scraps cool its heels in here for 2 weeks at a time, you’re insane. Law or not, that ain’t happening.
Along that same line, I assume that since these bins are designed to hold garbage that at some point they’ll need a cleaning. How is Joe Apartment Guy supposed to do that? I don’t have a hose up here, and even if I did, I refuse to rain my trash leavings and dirty water down upon the balconies and heads of my neighbours below. I remember the mess and how angry I was when the son of a bitch who lives above us mopped his balcony one Saturday afternoon spilling dirt, water and even the odd hair elastic all over my patio furniture, and that was nothing compared to the damage cleaning these things would cause.
And another thing to consider is that not all apartment buildings are created equal. I’m not strictly talking size here, I’m thinking more along the lines of elevators. The last building we lived in was a walk up. Nope, not an elevator to be found unless we were in the wrong house. I’m not sure if anybody on council has ever tried to transport a wide heavy thing up or down a narrow set of stairs or any set of stairs for that matter, but if not, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, and that’s assuming you can do it at all. Depending on how big these things are, there’s a chance they might not even fit in some stairwells.
Hopefully sometime over the next few years this will all get sorted out in a logical way, but in the meantime, I’m confused and would like answers.
