# Giant Recycling Bin Rant



## Pablo (Mar 27, 2006)

So Toronto has handed out GIANT recycling bins to everyone, in an effort to further add to the rediculousness of how they run this city. You can't find a garbage can on a major street- even down town in this city for 3 blocks- and when you do, they want you to actually jam your garbage through a 9x4" hole. More potholes than a minefield. A CRAPP Subway system, And now, the giant recycling bins.

Apparently the city thinks the average household will need to recycle the family dog, approximately 200 soda pop cans, 30 cans of pet food, 6 pizza boxes, the annoying kid across the street's skateboard, and about 20lbs of shredded office documents once a week.

Maybe they think people will enjoy having to lug out a giant, wheeled contraption that you can actually FIT A PERSON inside of with the lid shut back and forth to the curb- especially people who live in very small narrowly spaced houses- or places where the bin has to be placed on the street, ever so trashy looking- or disabled or elderly or otherwise less able to maneuver a five by three fot abonimation around people...

I don't know about you, but I personally think this is the biggest load of BS YET- and that says a lot- because pretty much everything that happens in Toronto at the official level is BS in its purest form- but this is like super refined in a laboratory weapons grade BS this time...

The whole reason is because they don't want to spend the labour and gas cost to get the trash to michigan... because recycling is handled locally by private companies who do this for profit...

_We ARE heading towards this!!_


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## gunnerx (Mar 20, 2008)

Just saw my friend's bin. It's definitely quite large. One point he made was, what happens every 2 weeks each month. Cars are parked on his side of the street during those 2 weeks so how will the recycling bins be picked up??


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## dekstr (Oct 23, 2007)

Well on the lighter side you can always do this:


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## Pablo (Mar 27, 2006)

gunnerx said:


> Just saw my friend's bin. It's definitely quite large. One point he made was, what happens every 2 weeks each month. Cars are parked on his side of the street during those 2 weeks so how will the recycling bins be picked up??


I dont know... I want to spray paint a middle finger and the words "Recycle this" on mine and go dump it on the lawn in Queens park honestly.


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## Guest (Apr 20, 2008)

Every homeowner was given the sizes of the bins and an option to choose the size. Most failed to send in that little piece of paper they sent out in December with the choices by the deadline (like my wife and I) The city has now realized it's folly when it comes to sizing and is allowing homeowners the option of switching to a smaller bin (the smaller ones are half the size) starting in May.

The large ones are waay to big. The extra large ones are huge!


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## Fishfinder (Feb 17, 2008)

Yea.... the new blue bin program comes with options for the sizes, most people should end up getting the ones that are the size of the current green bins. The larger ones are really more for business's and i suppose really large families.


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## hojimoe (Mar 7, 2008)

we have the large one, or whatever they sent out.... we never got the card to fill out like our entire neighbourhood, we asked around...


it's big it's bulky, but we find a way to fill it....family of 4, recycles pretty well... we've actually had to pull out our old recycling bins at times, because it wasn't big enough...

we get a paper daily, mirror 3 times a week, other local papers... it adds up...

pick up is only once every two weeks RETARDED MIND YOU...when we moved here , it was twice a week pick up (in '86 when I was born) then moved to once a week...every other week is BS squared...

in two weeks we compile, 14 newspapers (toronto star), ~8 local papers.... endless cardboard from pizza/pop/water bottles/etc.... this "large isn't enough really...


next don't get me started on the green bin, it's midget sized at best... we fill it with dog crap every two weeks...and we only have two dogs......next due to the fact that we get trash pickup bi-weekly, and have to keep trash in our garage, we've gotton a bit of a rat problem, so after trapping/poisoning rats, and we find them dead, we politely put a dead rat on the very top of the pile of dog crap in the green bin for the garbage men to see.... 


oh and raccoon/animal proof my arse.... after the first night with that green bin, the '***** realized if they tip it over IT OPENS!!!!!!!!!.... even my dog was able to open it without knocking it over to get some bbq rib bones at one point... or steak bones, i forgot.....

either way, toronto waste disposal department is BS ... let alone our mayors BS


*edit* i should add, with the recycling bin, we used to have 2 blue boxes and 2 green boxes, and extra bags we'd have to pile on the sides...now we have this POS and other things sometimes


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## KevD (Mar 2, 2008)

I like my gigantic recycling bin and I ordered it  It's full by the time I wheel it to the curb for collection and there are only 2 people living in this house  I protect the green bin from animal invasion by placing it in an old recycling bin and then covering it with another one. The latch does help somewhat as well. 
One thing I've noticed is that very few people read the instructions on proper placement of the bins on collection day. That makes the situation even worse as one worker has to move the bin so the automated arm can pick it up.
Just my 2 cents....like it or not


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## hojimoe (Mar 7, 2008)

yeah, but i'm yet to see a new truck for these bins as well..they are using 20 year old trucks in my area lol....


as for throwing it away saying "recycle this," you're house number is written in black marker somewhere on it, and it has a serial number registered to you as well 


LOL


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## Pablo (Mar 27, 2006)

Serial numbers etc are easily scratched off.


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## Pablo (Mar 27, 2006)

KevD said:


> I like my gigantic recycling bin and I ordered it  It's full by the time I wheel it to the curb for collection and there are only 2 people living in this house  I protect the green bin from animal invasion by placing it in an old recycling bin and then covering it with another one. The latch does help somewhat as well.
> One thing I've noticed is that very few people read the instructions on proper placement of the bins on collection day. That makes the situation even worse as one worker has to move the bin so the automated arm can pick it up.
> Just my 2 cents....like it or not


Don't you think its all a little rediculous though?

I miss the good old days. If you're done with it- its garbage. You put it indiscriminately, disorganizedly, on the curb, and its someone else's problem.

The fact that we're expected to SORT OUR GARBAGE is absolutely obscene to me.

Green bins and Blue bins actually do more harm to the environment than good- which nobody ever believes- but a banana and your dog's poo are going to decompose no matter where they throw them- and making all those green bins causes pollution.

As far as recycling I think most people know by now that it pollutes more to recycle plastic than it does to make it fresh. It pollutes more to recycle paper than it does to make new paper (paper- btw- comes from paper mills which ALL use self planted self sustaining little forest patches in north america now. Your paper DOES NOT come from old growth forest or damage the eco-system nearly to the extent that recycling it does)

The ONLY thing that actually has a net benefit to being recycled that is in your home is aluminum- and glass, ofcourse, because you can just wash and sterilize that. PETE plastic has a very very small net loss, but its still worse than making new, and everything else has varying degrees of net loss.

Recycling printed cardboard- IE a pizza box, when all is said and done, pollutes somewhere in the area of 3+ times more than making that box from scratch.


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## KevD (Mar 2, 2008)

I don't think it's ridiculous at all. Saying that once you've put it at the curb, it's someone else's problems is, imo...smacks of laziness to me  It's not that difficult  The good old days are just that....time to move on.

You'd have to provide scientific proof of your other statements to sway me in the direction you're thinking.

I'm not really that interested in discussing this issue. I respect your opinion even if I don't agree with it. If you're serious about debunking the whole recycling thing, you should be discussing it with the "powers that be" in order to make some changes to the system. It's not going to get done via this medium.

BTW, it should be reduce, reuse and recycle, in that order


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## hojimoe (Mar 7, 2008)

never doubted those facts pablo, in fact i tottaly agree with you, i hate recycling...but if we don't do it, and the toronto waste management groups in their nice spanking ford f-150's that my tax dollars paid for come around, they will inspect your trash and label is with nice bright stickers and NOT PICK UP YOUR TRASH b/c you didn't sort it properly...

it's happened...


and who says I can only have 4 bags of garbage from a family home in two weeks.... I'm sorry, i got about 5-6 now filled with junk from my fish room alone.... 

BS is what it is.... which is why my dad gets industrial sized garbage bags from work and we use 4 of those, each bag is equal to about 2.5-3 normal sized bags ROFL


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## kweenshaker (Mar 11, 2006)

instead of worrying about recycling at the consumer's standpoint, we have to figure out a way to get the manufacturers to figure shit out. The stats are something along the lines that for every bag of garbage/recycle we put on our curbs, there are 70 bags that are tossed from all the materials used to make and package products.

I'm an environmentalist and I do support recycling, but I agree these bins are soooo ridiculous. We have a large one (which I must admit we do fill each time!) but on recycle day we have to move 3 cars out of the driveway to drag the bloody thing to the curb! It's very annoying. Not to mention the plastic the thing is made of - what about the old boxes? What a waste.

I hate the green bin too. It's good in that we have a better solution for pet feces, bathroom tissue, etc etc, but what ever happened to composting? I still compost and every year have beautiful, lush *mostly* organic soil to put on my garden. Obviously people in apartments would have a difficult time composting, but very few use green bins anyway.

Oh, and one week they didn't empty our green bin. I called the city to find out why and the woman asked "Did you have to wheel it out to the curb?" Apparently using the wheels is a sign that it's too heavy for the lazy workers. In that case, WHY DID THEY PUT WHEELS ON THEM?

I've also seen them pick up a green recycle bag, decide it was over the weight limit and drop it again, when it would probably be just as easy to chuck it in the truck (he had already done half the work)....
gahhh 

oh and I laughed my ass off when I watched that first video on page one of this thread!! lol


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## Grey Legion (Mar 20, 2006)

Where I see the problem lying (for me at least) is the amount of junk mail we get, we have tried many time to reduce it with signs and telling the delivery people/post man and yet for every piece we say no to 500 more show up, we can fill a bin just with the weekly garbage that is put into our mail. I live in Mississauga and would lover a lidded recycle bin, where I live people have yet to grasp how to put garbage & recycling out and every week the racoons come by and tear it all to shreds leaving a huge mess of food waste and papers, cans etc.

I think this problem is so much bigger that the blue bins..


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## Zebrapl3co (Mar 29, 2006)

I though it was a good idea. It beats having blue and grey bin. 3 bin is my limit. Anything more and I'd start writing to my city counciller.
I actually like the big bin. It's easier to roll it out than to carry a blue box full of papers. It's easier on the garbage man. I just hope that is save money.
What I'd like to see is some thing to force condo builders to make buildings with a dedicated recycle and garbage shoot.
I remember I have to take an elevator down to the garbage room and dump my recycles. It sucks and smells really bad. Most of the residence just dump their recycle as garbage.

I don't know about you guys, but my heart just bleed when I go to a third world country and I see garbage all over the place and the polution we're dumping in to them. I don't think burrying them under a pile of dirt is a solution. Eventually, we'll run out of places to burry. Also, my impression is that people who bought their house on top of a dump site tend to have a higher rate of cancer. Say what you want, but we are the scum of the planet. We dump more garbage and cause more polution than the rest of the world. Well ... save maybe China or India. We are poisoning our kids and our kids' kids.

There is no more the old-days, get used to it. Our fore fathers have been careless and now we are sniffing it up even as we are making our own mess. It sucks, hope you like living in a time where cancer is the number 1 killer in the world and you don't know when you'll be next but some of your friends parent and friends have already died from it.

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## Grey Legion (Mar 20, 2006)

Zebrapl3co said:


> I though it was a good idea. It beats having blue and grey bin. 3 bin is my limit. Anything more and I'd start writing to my city counciller.
> I actually like the big bin. It's easier to roll it out than to carry a blue box full of papers. It's easier on the garbage man. I just hope that is save money.
> What I'd like to see is some thing to force condo builders to make buildings with a dedicated recycle and garbage shoot.
> I remember I have to take an elevator down to the garbage room and dump my recycles. It sucks and smells really bad. Most of the residence just dump their recycle as garbage.
> ...


...And the Academy Award for best Drama goes to...

No just kidding, I hear what your saying and most of it is true, don't know about the house on the dump thing. but we have a lot of catch up ahead of us to clear up the mistakes of our past.


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## Pablo (Mar 27, 2006)

Any garbage man that screws me gets stuff thrown at them... drop my green bin? 

WHAP rotten cabbage to the head


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## Grey Legion (Mar 20, 2006)

Pablo said:


> Any garbage man that screws me gets stuff thrown at them... drop my green bin?
> 
> WHAP rotten cabbage to the head


Shouldn't your rotten cabbage be "in" the garbage, or do you keep one around for the disgruntled garbage man ??


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## Pablo (Mar 27, 2006)

Just one. And it should be in the GREEN bin. Not the garbage.

This is one thing I feel Spain has done correctly. If you tried to tell a Spanish person to 'sort their garbage' into three bins or only throw that coke can in the correct public receptacle they'd laugh so hard they'd cry and possibly lose their lunch. I'm serious.


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## kweenshaker (Mar 11, 2006)

Pablo said:


> Just one. And it should be in the GREEN bin. Not the garbage.
> 
> This is one thing I feel Spain has done correctly. If you tried to tell a Spanish person to 'sort their garbage' into three bins or only throw that coke can in the correct public receptacle they'd laugh so hard they'd cry and possibly lose their lunch. I'm serious.


meaning they dump 100% of their waste? Or it goes to sorting facilities?


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## Pablo (Mar 27, 2006)

kweenshaker said:


> meaning they dump 100% of their waste? Or it goes to sorting facilities?


No they burn it. Cleanly with carbon scrubbers. The carbon is then buried.


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## kweenshaker (Mar 11, 2006)

here is a video about where things come from and what happens after we throw them on the curb. It's 20 minutes long and she talks like a kindergarten teacher, but it's presented well and is very easy to understand.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/


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## Pablo (Mar 27, 2006)

I think where they come from and what happens once they hit the curb is someone else's problem.  

A little 80's but the 80's were much better than the 90's and 00's have been so...


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## kweenshaker (Mar 11, 2006)

Pablo said:


> No they burn it. Cleanly with carbon scrubbers. The carbon is then buried.


ahh. yeah, europe is better than NA in so many ways. We definitely need a better solution, but Canada doesn't want to invest in decent technology. The incinerator that McSquinty wants is ludicrous. Hellllooooo air pollution.


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