Waste Management

[Acitta]

Waterloo region set to make pricey changes to waste management
High costs attributed to new industry standards, waste management director says
Changes in the new contract include a switch to carts from bins, greener trucks and a four-day collection week.

[the_conestoga_guy]

I wonder how this will effect the enforcement of bag limits. These 240L bins are fairly large, so people may end up throwing more in the trash if they think they're allowed to fill them. Plus, the bag limits won't be enforced if the operator is just someone pressing a button in the cab of the truck. Hopefully this extra volume doesn't end up reducing the life span of our dump.

[Acitta]

I wonder how this will effect the enforcement of bag limits. These 240L bins are fairly large, so people may end up throwing more in the trash if they think they're allowed to fill them. Plus, the bag limits won't be enforced if the operator is just someone pressing a button in the cab of the truck. Hopefully this extra volume doesn't end up reducing the life span of our dump.

The usual practice is that trash is only picked up every two weeks, while recycling and green bin are picked up weekly, so it is in people's interest to practice good recycling to get rid of their waste more quickly.

[danbrotherston]

Waste collection in our city in NL:

- Garbage: In the bin at the end of the road, collected by the city as needed.
- Recycling, monthly, paper in one bin, plastic + metal in another bin, we put the bins on the sidewalk, and the truck comes along with a double arm and picks up two at a time. It takes all of 5 minutes to collect the entire blocks worth of bins (maybe 40 homes).
- Compost, every two weeks, same kind of bin, but with an electric truck which is nearly silent.
- Glass and textiles, a few centralised bins we must carry stuff too, and separate colours of glass....this is the only annoying part because it's relatively far away.
- Some plastic drinking containers (and beer bottles) have a deposit on them that you get back if you return them to the store you bought them at and put them in the slow and problematic machine (IMO this is poorly implemented).

FWIW...the system is ... complicated...but does work reasonably well.

It's also interesting that nobody puts any kind of liner in their compost bin (which again, is bi-weekly collection) they just throw raw food and scraps in the bin. Yeah, you get some bugs in summer but like, it's not that big a deal (it helps that most people don't have a huge amount of meat in the bin).

But also the bins are not unique to Europe...my parents had the bin collection in their home in St. Marys. I'm kind of surprised the region didn't do the bin collection the last time the contract was signed, my understanding is that it is much cheaper because it takes less labour.

[ac3r]

Compared to the way we do waste management here to places like Japan, South Korea, EU it's so archaic. Small steps here, I suppose, but we really need to pick things up. Instead of banning bread tags and straws, we need proper investment into infrastructure to minimize waste and maximize the reuse of any we do generate.

This is true for all of North America, but locally too. The fact this region has clung on to the goofy tiny blue box thing so many decades it's a good example. It's ridiculous to be doing that lol. The inefficiencies of running hundreds of diesel trucks every day of the week to pick up dirty margarine containers and crap, accelerating and braking every 30 feet for 1/4th a wheelbarrow of junk is an irony. We should have been using either larger wheely bin containers long ago, or better yet do it in a way it is done in many EU nations. Most neighbourhoods in cities will use a combination of wheeled bins, or a series of rather large communal bins for recyclables such as a few for different coloured glass and metals. Rubbish and organics have more direct collection, but it's still often combined in larger volumes. There's also quite often a broader system of deposit/returnable bottle use, similar to that in Quebec where regular drink containers can often also get returned.

Would be better if we just totally reformed and modernized the thing, though. We bury hundreds of millions of dollars worth of material and potential energy each year. All our politicians are seemingly too stupid to do anything about it though.

[tomh009]

Japan does not use wheeled bins for recycling, either. Their recycling rules are stricter than ours, but I don't think those rules would work here.

[Vojnik_Vahaj]

Compared to the way we do waste management here to places like Japan, South Korea, EU it's so archaic. Small steps here, I suppose, but we really need to pick things up. Instead of banning bread tags and straws, we need proper investment into infrastructure to minimize waste and maximize the reuse of any we do generate.

This is true for all of North America, but locally too. The fact this region has clung on to the goofy tiny blue box thing so many decades it's a good example. It's ridiculous to be doing that lol. The inefficiencies of running hundreds of diesel trucks every day of the week to pick up dirty margarine containers and crap, accelerating and braking every 30 feet for 1/4th a wheelbarrow of junk is an irony. We should have been using either larger wheely bin containers long ago, or better yet do it in a way it is done in many EU nations. Most neighbourhoods in cities will use a combination of wheeled bins, or a series of rather large communal bins for recyclables such as a few for different coloured glass and metals. Rubbish and organics have more direct collection, but it's still often combined in larger volumes. There's also quite often a broader system of deposit/returnable bottle use, similar to that in Quebec where regular drink containers can often also get returned.

Would be better if we just totally reformed and modernized the thing, though. We bury hundreds of millions of dollars worth of material and potential energy each year. All our politicians are seemingly too stupid to do anything about it though.

Yea, I genuinely don't understand how we don't have communal bins for waste management

[SF22]

Compared to the way we do waste management here to places like Japan, South Korea, EU it's so archaic. Small steps here, I suppose, but we really need to pick things up. Instead of banning bread tags and straws, we need proper investment into infrastructure to minimize waste and maximize the reuse of any we do generate.

This is true for all of North America, but locally too. The fact this region has clung on to the goofy tiny blue box thing so many decades it's a good example. It's ridiculous to be doing that lol. The inefficiencies of running hundreds of diesel trucks every day of the week to pick up dirty margarine containers and crap, accelerating and braking every 30 feet for 1/4th a wheelbarrow of junk is an irony. We should have been using either larger wheely bin containers long ago, or better yet do it in a way it is done in many EU nations. Most neighbourhoods in cities will use a combination of wheeled bins, or a series of rather large communal bins for recyclables such as a few for different coloured glass and metals. Rubbish and organics have more direct collection, but it's still often combined in larger volumes. There's also quite often a broader system of deposit/returnable bottle use, similar to that in Quebec where regular drink containers can often also get returned.

Would be better if we just totally reformed and modernized the thing, though. We bury hundreds of millions of dollars worth of material and potential energy each year. All our politicians are seemingly too stupid to do anything about it though.

Yea, I genuinely don't understand how we don't have communal bins for waste management

Oh no, I absolutely get why this hasn't been a thing here. Can you imagine the uproar if A) we told people that they needed to walk down the block to drop their garbage into the bin, or B) that the city was going to be installing waste containers in front of their house? 

I saw these in action while visiting a friend in Hamburg, and I think they're great - they kept the streets clean of all that visual (and literal) litter, and the trucks came by at like 7am to empty them out, but you can drop off your bags whenever they get full, so it's not like you need to be out at 6am to make sure the trash in on the curb. Everything sits underground so you don't see or smell it. I'd be in full support of moving to this kind of model, but I do think it would be an uphill battle to convince people to get onboard. Maybe if we started in the downtown cores and then slowly spread outwards?

[Vojnik_Vahaj]

Yea, I genuinely don't understand how we don't have communal bins for waste management

Oh no, I absolutely get why this hasn't been a thing here. Can you imagine the uproar if A) we told people that they needed to walk down the block to drop their garbage into the bin, or B) that the city was going to be installing waste containers in front of their house? 

I saw these in action while visiting a friend in Hamburg, and I think they're great - they kept the streets clean of all that visual (and literal) litter, and the trucks came by at like 7am to empty them out, but you can drop off your bags whenever they get full, so it's not like you need to be out at 6am to make sure the trash in on the curb. Everything sits underground so you don't see or smell it. I'd be in full support of moving to this kind of model, but I do think it would be an uphill battle to convince people to get onboard. Maybe if we started in the downtown cores and then slowly spread outwards?

Yea, I've seen them in my homeland as well(2nd world country) and they work great in the cities. We could perhaps integrate them with the neighborhood mailboxes+have a landscaped barrier(hedges or something) which would lessen the blow from people who'll have them in front of their house. NIMBYs gotta NIMBY though and it will be tough. The downtown cores-outward is a good idea

[danbrotherston]

Oh no, I absolutely get why this hasn't been a thing here. Can you imagine the uproar if A) we told people that they needed to walk down the block to drop their garbage into the bin, or B) that the city was going to be installing waste containers in front of their house? 

I saw these in action while visiting a friend in Hamburg, and I think they're great - they kept the streets clean of all that visual (and literal) litter, and the trucks came by at like 7am to empty them out, but you can drop off your bags whenever they get full, so it's not like you need to be out at 6am to make sure the trash in on the curb. Everything sits underground so you don't see or smell it. I'd be in full support of moving to this kind of model, but I do think it would be an uphill battle to convince people to get onboard. Maybe if we started in the downtown cores and then slowly spread outwards?

Yea, I've seen them in my homeland as well(2nd world country) and they work great in the cities. We could perhaps integrate them with the neighborhood mailboxes+have a landscaped barrier(hedges or something) which would lessen the blow from people who'll have them in front of their house. NIMBYs gotta NIMBY though and it will be tough. The downtown cores-outward is a good idea

North America doesn't even have these bins in places like NYC where garbage IS collected on the street. It's remarkable that the premier city in an ostensibly first world country has it's sidewalks absolutely clogged with garbage once a week. It's absolutely bonkers. But so is pretty much everything else NYC does.

But in suburbs in Canada...pfft...forget it...homeowners complain about their bins just being in their driveways...never mind having to walk to the corner. As for where mailboxes are, in some suburbs, for some homes, they're actually legitimately too far away. And a final note, we'd have to deal with winter. I mean, removing the snow is easy, but since we, as a society will not invest in public winter maintenance, it becomes a problem.

[bravado]

I remember the uproar from making people walk 40 metres to the communal mailbox. It turns out people would rather see Canada Post go bankrupt than walk to get weekly junk mail.

[Vojnik_Vahaj]

Junk mail should be banned. Waste of paper.

[dtkvictim]

I saw these in action while visiting a friend in Hamburg, and I think they're great - they kept the streets clean of all that visual (and literal) litter, and the trucks came by at like 7am to empty them out, but you can drop off your bags whenever they get full, so it's not like you need to be out at 6am to make sure the trash in on the curb. Everything sits underground so you don't see or smell it. I'd be in full support of moving to this kind of model, but I do think it would be an uphill battle to convince people to get onboard. Maybe if we started in the downtown cores and then slowly spread outwards?

I've complained about this before, but I can only laugh at some of your alleged benefits. I have these communal underground bins where I am downtown. I can't step out my back door without walking over trash that has blown over from the bins. Every time the property I live on gets cleaned up, the trash is all back in just a few days. I watch out my window all day and night and see countless vehicles, many clearly businesses from other areas, but also individuals, show up to dump their trash for free. I'd wager at least 30% of them don't even check if the bins are full and just dump all of their trash on the ground next to the bins (???). Makes my blood boil. Even on days where compliance with actually putting trash inside of the bins is high it still ends up overflowing (which means I can't take my own trash out whenever I want) because so many people are using it to avoid paying at the dump.

The overflowing garbage is also like a magnet for homeless people throughout the night. I don't inherently have any issue with this, but all too often they are ripping open bags and dumping the contents all over the ground. And worse is when they don't find anything, they almost always resort to checking the cars. When the cars are all locked, they resort to smashing my window to steal the absolute nothing I keep inside. Seriously, I can't afford to keep buying new windows...

Some of this overuse could be alleviated by having this option available elsewhere, but would make imposing free garbage limits impossible. And some of the appalling behaviour I see, I just don't know how you fix that.

[danbrotherston]

I saw these in action while visiting a friend in Hamburg, and I think they're great - they kept the streets clean of all that visual (and literal) litter, and the trucks came by at like 7am to empty them out, but you can drop off your bags whenever they get full, so it's not like you need to be out at 6am to make sure the trash in on the curb. Everything sits underground so you don't see or smell it. I'd be in full support of moving to this kind of model, but I do think it would be an uphill battle to convince people to get onboard. Maybe if we started in the downtown cores and then slowly spread outwards?

I've complained about this before, but I can only laugh at some of your alleged benefits. I have these communal underground bins where I am downtown. I can't step out my back door without walking over trash that has blown over from the bins. Every time the property I live on gets cleaned up, the trash is all back in just a few days. I watch out my window all day and night and see countless vehicles, many clearly businesses from other areas, but also individuals, show up to dump their trash for free. I'd wager at least 30% of them don't even check if the bins are full and just dump all of their trash on the ground next to the bins (???). Makes my blood boil. Even on days where compliance with actually putting trash inside of the bins is high it still ends up overflowing (which means I can't take my own trash out whenever I want) because so many people are using it to avoid paying at the dump.

The overflowing garbage is also like a magnet for homeless people throughout the night. I don't inherently have any issue with this, but all too often they are ripping open bags and dumping the contents all over the ground. And worse is when they don't find anything, they almost always resort to checking the cars. When the cars are all locked, they resort to smashing my window to steal the absolute nothing I keep inside. Seriously, I can't afford to keep buying new windows...

Some of this overuse could be alleviated by having this option available elsewhere, but would make imposing free garbage limits impossible. And some of the appalling behaviour I see, I just don't know how you fix that.

Basically 100% of these issues are fixed with the designs we have in the Netherlands.

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.1858405,...&entry=ttu

This is the end of my block, there is a bin here and one at the other end. The top pedestal is where you put your garbage. You scan a card, open the door put your bag in, close the door and the bag falls into the bin underneath.

Eventually a truck comes and pulls the whole thing out of the ground and empties.

We don't pay per bag, but we could because the card is tied to our address. There is no garbage coming out because you cannot get the garbage back out of the bin without a literal crane. Everyone with an address has a card, so the municipality would know if there was abuse, but you also physically cannot dump more than household waste. And because the bins are tapped every time they are used, the municipality knows when they are full.

Honestly this is one of the very many examples of a thing that is just obviously better here and I cannot explain why. Like sure, changing policies to built bike lanes and good cities is hard politically and socially, but this kind of thing isn't, there's no laws against it.

Again, not saying this, politically, would be even slightly an option for suburban homeowners but there are lots of condominiums and complexes where communal bins are used, and this would be a great solution there, and yet, it does not exist in the continent as far as I know.

[dtkvictim]

I've complained about this before, but I can only laugh at some of your alleged benefits. I have these communal underground bins where I am downtown. I can't step out my back door without walking over trash that has blown over from the bins. Every time the property I live on gets cleaned up, the trash is all back in just a few days. I watch out my window all day and night and see countless vehicles, many clearly businesses from other areas, but also individuals, show up to dump their trash for free. I'd wager at least 30% of them don't even check if the bins are full and just dump all of their trash on the ground next to the bins (???). Makes my blood boil. Even on days where compliance with actually putting trash inside of the bins is high it still ends up overflowing (which means I can't take my own trash out whenever I want) because so many people are using it to avoid paying at the dump.

The overflowing garbage is also like a magnet for homeless people throughout the night. I don't inherently have any issue with this, but all too often they are ripping open bags and dumping the contents all over the ground. And worse is when they don't find anything, they almost always resort to checking the cars. When the cars are all locked, they resort to smashing my window to steal the absolute nothing I keep inside. Seriously, I can't afford to keep buying new windows...

Some of this overuse could be alleviated by having this option available elsewhere, but would make imposing free garbage limits impossible. And some of the appalling behaviour I see, I just don't know how you fix that.

Basically 100% of these issues are fixed with the designs we have in the Netherlands.

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.1858405,...&entry=ttu

This is the end of my block, there is a bin here and one at the other end. The top pedestal is where you put your garbage. You scan a card, open the door put your bag in, close the door and the bag falls into the bin underneath.

Eventually a truck comes and pulls the whole thing out of the ground and empties.

We don't pay per bag, but we could because the card is tied to our address. There is no garbage coming out because you cannot get the garbage back out of the bin without a literal crane. Everyone with an address has a card, so the municipality would know if there was abuse, but you also physically cannot dump more than household waste. And because the bins are tapped every time they are used, the municipality knows when they are full.

Honestly this is one of the very many examples of a thing that is just obviously better here and I cannot explain why. Like sure, changing policies to built bike lanes and good cities is hard politically and socially, but this kind of thing isn't, there's no laws against it.

Again, not saying this, politically, would be even slightly an option for suburban homeowners but there are lots of condominiums and complexes where communal bins are used, and this would be a great solution there, and yet, it does not exist in the continent as far as I know.

That doesn't solve the most egregious offence of people dumping outside of the bins when they aren't even close to full. But honestly, I'm not sure what logic they are using in the first place so I don't know how to approach solving that.

I wonder how the expense breakdown looks between what we do now for suburbs vs what I have vs what you linked with electrical and networking hookups.

And I'm curious if you know how often your trash ends up being collected? My underground bin is emptied every single night (usually a box truck has to come by to pick up the spillover by hand, then a crane truck for garbage, and a crane truck for recycling). I'm not sure how feasible it would be to do more often, particularly during the busy daytime I think the large crane trucks would have trouble fitting in.