Recycling Issues

[MidTowner]

In other words, a house with a single widowed person has the same garbage allotment than a family of five: mom, dad and three kids ages nine, eleven and thirteen.

Are they really considering this as a reasonable policy?

It's common in jurisdictions with limits to have some set of exemptions for families with children, or people who through no fault of their own (maybe a medical condition that requires a lot of material) produce more waste than the average. In Hamilton, for instance, there is a "special exemption" for families with more than one child under the age of four. Your example would be subject to the same bag limits (which I don't think would be exactly onerous), but some households would likely be able to have limits waived.

I'm not sure about this, myself. Why should my family's waste collection be subsidized by the widow in your example? I chose to have kids, so I'm not sure why I should not be paying for extra bag tags if I can't find a way to reduce the waste they produce.

I think that the biweekly collection makes good sense, personally. I think the most-anticipated complaint to that is that "garbage will start smelling" within the two weeks, but our green bin service is very good- most everything is collected, including pet waste, which is not true in some other jurisdictions. There is no longer much excuse for throwing any organic waste in the landfill stream. In Vancouver, that will soon no longer be acceptable at all, and it shouldn't be here, either, after having the green bin for a few years.