MillieF

Are there bits of Canada that are hot on recycling? NB doesn't appear to be...I couldn't work out why the neighbours have bin after bin of rubbish, it's because they are shoving everything in it. I rang City Hall this morning to find out where to take my glass and was told to stick it in my garbage. This can't be the same all over Canada surely? It just seems odd that you are asked not to wear perfume in public in case someone is allergic and have a by-law to cover everything from the length of your dogs leash, to appropriate places to fly a kite...but are asked to put glass in the rubbish. It's bloody good that Canada is big if this is all going into land fill.

MrWindUpBird

Vancouver has mandatory recycling (You can be fined for putting recyclables in landfill).

iaink

We have free blue box collection for glass, metal, paper and plastics. Anything else you want taken away goes in the garbage and costs a couple of bucks for a garbage tag sticker per bag.

Some places also have municipal compost pickup, but we just have a pile in the backyard that the racoons help dispose off...

Novocastrian

We have blue boxes, like Iain, green bins for leftover food / organic stuff (both collected weekly) and general garbage in big black plastic packs collected once a fortnight.

All free (or rather flat rate within the property tax).

They'll also take old furniture etc etc without blinking, although if it's usable, just putting on the street with a "free" note on it guarantees its disappearance overnight.

Oh, and unlimited garden waste packed into brown paper bags during the season. (The bags cost a couple of bucks for 5 at any supermarket.

Atlantic Xpat

As with so much in Canada, it all depends upon the municipality and/or province. The town I live in recently instituted kerbside pickup of cardboard/paper/plastic/food containers. Domestic, locally produced beer bottles (which are a different size from the mainland) go back to the beer depot or the local corner store for a refund of the deposit (5c). Other beverage containers get taken to the green depot for the same. We compost at home.

With all that, on average we're putting 2 bags out a week for garbage for a family of four. And one bag of that probably consists of diapers. We're not green enough not to use disposable diapers.

R I C H

I'm out of city limits, so no garbage collection. The truck gets loaded with garbage every few weeks, I drive to the dump, hand over $7.50 and it all gets buried. Driving an additional 16kms round trip to separate glass etc etc holds no interest.

Novocastrian

Tell me more please.

BristolUK

Looks like it's not even the same in the same province.

We have wet/green and dry/blue bags. They have to be clear. If a black bag or completely clear one is put out it gets a sticker on it and it's left. Ditto if they can see something is in the wrong bag, although that's not as much a no-no as the wrong bag.

There's a delivery place for the "unsafe" stuff but it's no good unless you have transport to get it there.

Annual pick up (twice over the river, I think) for large stuff. And irritatingly, depots for bottles and cans. It's just not appealing (or easy or practical) to load 20-30 plastic 2l bottles into a backpack and cycle over there for $1 to $1.50 - not to mention embarrassing when others are collecting $80. So they go out with the rest. Fund raisers used to collect them but they're not interested anymore.


And leashing a cat.

scheherazade

I put off figuring out how the recycling works until I couldn't get in the pantry anymore because of all the boxes of stuff I'd collected. I can put paper, some plastic and tins (with labels removed) (all bagged separately) in the recycling bin by our alley. Any container that held a beverage can be taken to the local recycling centre and you get some money back depending on the numbers/sizes of the containers. Most of our organic waste just gets put down the garbage disposal in the sink (I'm still terrified of it though).

Jingsamichty

When we lived in Calgary, one of the things that enraged me the most was to see all these selfish, brain-dead cretins who would meticulously water their lawns daily (automated, naturally), mow their lawns weekly (gasoline powered, naturally), and fill plastic bin bags with the trimmings, to be oh-so-neatly lined up on the drive for collection and dumped in the landfill.

Greenest city in Canada, apparently.

Hawk13

Most of BC has pretty good recycling programs but I don't think any municipality does food stuff like Novocastrian mentioned, if they did they'd have to start an "adopt a bear" program at the same time.

The4BellsLondon

Vancouver does a yard waste bin And you are meant to put food scraps in that!

Hawk13

That must be limited to downtown Vancouver 'cus you can't even have a bird feeder over on the Shore

dbd33

Melancthon, a little part of Ontario, has a red neck population; the dump has signs warning that out-of-hours it's a hunting area so enter at your own risk. There's no garbage pick up. Still it's astonishingly efficient, the dump is supervised; clear glass, coloured glass, cardboard, appliances, tyres, metals, compost (usable) compost (unusable) all have their places. I didn't pay much attention to the compost piles because, at the time, I had chickens and so nothing left to contribute, but people did turn up with their horse and dog shit in different bins. They charge for the really troublesome stuff, shingles and the like, otherwise you just need a residence card.

Now, I suspect that a big lorry comes and all this carefully collated stuff is hauled away and dumped in a hole in Michigan, but, locally, every effort is made.

MrWindUpBird

Bears don't tend to cross the bridges. It's news when they do:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...vancouver.html