Raise the Hammer

I live downtown, right near the GO, in a condo building. It's a converted apartment building, built in the 1960s.

Our building has had an ongoing issue with waste, blue bins, and green bins. Since our building was built in the pre-recycling days, we have nowhere to store our blue bins. Because we don't have any above-ground enclosed parking or storage, our bins go in the garage, along a wall. We've been told by our property manager that if the fire department did a tour of the building, we would probably be told that the blue bins used for paper would be tagged as a fire hazard, and we'd have to find another place to store them. We'd then either have to build a room to store them, store them outdoors, or convert some of the inside storage space into a room for collecting paper recycling.

When the green bins went in, they were barely used. Use has gone up, but not significantly. Most of the time we put out only 2 large bins per week, but they are completely full.

We've also been told by the city that we produce a fair amount of non-recyclable waste relative to the size of our building. I am not aware of the rules regarding waste for apartments and condos, but I would guess my estimate of one bag per unit per week (is this accurate) is still considered too much.

If the city does go to a bi-weekly pickup schedule, I know our building will have a difficult time with waste pickup. We already fill our very small storage/trash/cleaning supply area with waste on a weekly basis. Our condo board did investigate getting private waste pickup, but again, we have no space for a dumpster and don't want to have to put it outside near our garage entrance, then have to worry about people dumping their waste in it/breaking into it/damaging it.

I think that city council needs to bring back the bulk pickup days, or in lieu of that, make it easier to dispose of bulk waste (perhaps more temporary sites where you can drop off bulk stuff that gets picked up daily by larger trucks, or more organized pickup of waste like at the Dundas waste collection site). I tend to disagree that all waste can be reused or recycled - for example, if I have a couch that's threadbare, or a leather couch that's worn/cracked/ripped - how does one easily make that into a new couch someone else would want or break it down into it's components?