Saying they were responding to citizen uproar over proposed changes to garbage policy, Halifax councillors Tuesday voted not to hear more citizen uproar, cancelled a public hearing scheduled for that evening and instead put the entire issue off for two years.
At issue were proposed bylaw changes that would tighten the garbage bag limit from six to four and require the use of see-through garbage bags. Those changes are now on hold for at least two years.
But with over 100 people signed up to speak at the hearing, some councillors didn’t think cancelling it was an appropriate game plan.
“We should be proceeding with the public hearing,” said councillor Debbie Hum. “We’re taking away their democratic right.” She said if people don’t understand the proposed changes, councillors should have allowed them to speak and see where the information is getting crossed.
“We’ve kept people waiting this long, we might as well have gone ahead with the whole thing,” agreed councillor Gloria McCluskey.
But, perhaps seeing where public sentiment lays, council backed councillor Reg Rankin’s motion to cancel the hearing and claim the whole controversy resulted from a lack of public understanding of the proposals. It’s better to “educate rather than legislate,” said Rankin. Without appropriating any money for it, council voted to embark on an education program to create awareness and educate people so they have a better understanding of the proposed changes.
For now, residents can stop worrying about the four-bag limitation and the clear bag policy; it won’t be in effect for at least two years, providing council decides to revisit the issue after teaching the public how to sort their trash.
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2011.
I had no problem with the four-bag limitation; it was the clear bag policy that I had an issue with.
I realize that once my garbage is on the curb, it is free for anyone to go through, but what I throw out, does not need to be displayed to the entire neighborhood.
1fallingangels1- I don’t have strong opinions about this issue- really, I wish the province would address it via limits on packaging- but to be, er, clear: the proposal allowed for one dark “privacy” bag to be among the four allowable bags. That is, one dark bag, three clear bags.
I understand the intent of the clear bag policy, which would have made enforcement of the existing recycling and composting rules much easier. But I am sympathetic to the privacy concerns, too. The one dark bag provision seemed like a decent compromise.
However, I’m not fully behind the idea of a four bag limit. We don’t have a lot of control over the amount of non-recyclable packaging the we go through. I agree with Tim about dealing with non-recyclable waste further “upstream” ie. at the manufacturing, wholesale and retail levels. We are very conscientious about our recycling efforts and we make extensive use of kitchen compost in our home gardens (our green bin is frequently empty on pickup day), but even so, we can easily end up with more than four bags at the curbside after two weeks. I would have liked to see them retain the six bag limit while implementing the clear bags.
On the subject of reducing waste packaging “upstream” from the consumer, I would like to see a better national standard for labeling of packaging material. In some cases I have searched in vain for a number code on some plastic packaging. I don’t like to put “unknowns” into the blue bag since, if I’m wrong, this just makes more work downstream and adds to the cost of sorting. But in many cases the number codes are either too small to read, illegibly imprinted or nonexistent and in this area, if it isn’t clearly a “1” or a “2” it goes into the unsorted trash. An enforced national standard for recycling labeling would make it easier for us to sort.
The proposal was intellectually flawed. If clear bags are designed to keep people from breaking the garbage police’s rules, why allow a dark bag still? They are saying you can still break the rules, just perhaps not as much. No wonder people are confused and annoyed. .
IF this is a quantifiably effective way of improving compliance on garbage sorting then I’d support it. Four bag limit is fine as well. As for my garbage being of interest to my neighbors, I really don’t care.
Council and citizens, on to issues of more importance please.
I, for the life of me, don’t understand this “privacy” issue. What don’t you want people to see? It’s waste!! Tampons, condoms? All part of everyday life. Maybe it’s more like drug paraphenalia, counterfeit bills (they can actually go with the paper waste), a human head (compost). Wanting so much privacy makes one wonder. We’ve been using clear bags down here in Falmouth for about 15 years. Hants County waste management sent a sheet showing how to manage your waste (a 3 minute read) and if you didn’t do it properly, they slap a sticker on the bag in question showing your error and left it. Do it right and they pick it up. Not complicated.
You don’t have a lot of dense residential communities in Falmouth. In some areas of Hali people live in very close proximity. Some of those people are inordinately nosy. Others are busybodies who love to report violations of any of our plethora of bylaws to the authorities. Basically I think a lot of people in Hali are very skeptical of anything the municipal govt proposes because they are so intrusive and are seen as being on a spending spree with tax dollars to make the people giving them those dollars miserable.
The idea that having clear bags is somehow undemocratic is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.
I am in full agreement with the intent of the “clear bag” policy. We need to improve the diversion of recyclable materials from our waste stream.
However, I have some concerns about implementation. As I pointed out in my previous comment, the HRM currently only accepts #1 PETE and #2HDPE plastics for recycling. Without clearly visible labeling, these are virtually indistinguishable from the multitude of other plastics in our trash. How much extra time will the collectors spend in determining whether the plastics in the clear garbage bag are indeed trash and not recyclable?
Since the clear bag rule has been successful in reducing the waste stream in other parts of Nova Scotia, I still support it, but I’d like to know how other jurisdictions deal with these details.