Curbing our desire to trash it up

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leaves carrying

I love the move made this week by the municipality to stop allowing people to put 10 more bags of trash to the curb in the fall and spring each week.

The old rule was in place to let people bag their leaves or grass and leave it for curbside pickup – an expensive and environmentally unfriendly convenience.

Maybe it’s because I own a pickup truck, but I don’t put yard waste out at the curb. I haul it off to the yard and leaf depot on Creek Road.

But having seen how many bags of yard waste have wound up at the curb in town over the years, I know there are tons of people who will be impacted by this move.

It’s time to break a habit, one that cost all taxpayers collectively and extra $30,000 or so a year in tipping fees alone. That doesn’t account for extra time taken by curbside sanitation crews to load all the bags of leaves each week.

By taking the extra bags out of the equation, municipal officials believe this will divert 1,000 tonnes of yard waste – that’s one million kilograms – from the landfill site each year.

And all of that material is not only biodegradable, but if composted, will break down into rich soil.

The leaves and grass don’t belong in the landfill. But that doesn’t say people can’t still get it there, as they are allowed to put it to the curb as part of their regular four-bag limit.

So, if you have no way of getting your yard waste to the depot and don’t want to pay someone to take it there for you, then you can portion out the material each week with your regular garbage, unless you are a trash fiend who is allergic to recycling (unfortunately, if you look at what is put to the curb each week, there are too many of these people out there).

As for me, I’ll load up the back of the truck on a few weekends this fall, and say hello to the yard depot overseer, back the truck up and dump out my yard waste into the colossal compost pile.

2 COMMENTS

  1. I agree with the direction of this opinion piece but I think that people are more fired up because this is another service that is being cut while our taxes keep going up. I too use the compost heap in Ridgetown when I have large amounts of compostable or shred-worthy material to get rid of. If you go on the right day there is mulch or soil available too!

  2. Compost it. it is good for the garden. Since when was it local governments job to do everything for you. Next you will want them to wipe your nose

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