Stouffville resident upset with blue box items blowing in the wind

Coun. Sue Sherban wants to start conversation on solutions

YorkRegion.com
Jan 23, 2019
Lisa Queen

Every day as Roger Davidson and his black Labrador, Bosco, walk several kilometres along the trails of Stouffville, he fills shopping bags with garbage.

Over the last year, the 71-year-old former car dealership owner has collected more than 1,400 bags of trash.

Bosco even helps, jumping into ponds to retrieve discarded water bottles and dashing into forests to pick up cans overlooked by his owner.

The amount of trash he finds daily leaves Davidson frustrated.

“I’m a lover of nature and wildlife and forests and I hate to see them filled with garbage,” he said.

“We’ve got hundreds of different species of animals and birds that live in these forests and they don’t need this in their backyard, either.”

He’s seen dead herons at a pond near Ninth Line and Reeves Way Boulevard, likely killed because they ingested plastic.

A founding member of a Facebook community garbage pick-up page, Davidson believes litterbugs are responsible for much of the trash he collects.

But he estimates at least a quarter of the waste is recyclable items blown out of blue boxes.

“If I see there’s a strong wind out there, the last thing I’m going to do is put my blue box out the night before so it can blow all over the street,” he said.

“I’ll put it out in such a way that it’s covered so stuff can’t blow away. There’s people who don’t seem to care whether their blue box blows away or not.”

It’s time for Whitchurch-Stouffville’s new council to start a conversation about finding a solution to blue box items strewn around town, Coun. Sue Sherban said.

“It’s obvious what we’re doing is not working and the residents don’t deserve to have to go around picking up garbage because of the over-spillage of the blue bins,” she said, adding she’s pleased residents have embraced using blue boxes.

 “I don’t believe the people of Stouffville are walking around dropping their garbage on purpose on the ground. This garbage is coming from the blue bins. Residents are saying we need to do something different.”

Sherban acknowledged there is no quick fix.

And the conversation would have to include York Region’s other northern municipalities of Georgina, East Gwillimbury, Newmarket, King Township and Aurora, known as the N6, which jointly contract garbage collection with the GFL Green For Life Environmental company.

The town could investigate switching to large recycling carts with lids such as the ones used in Toronto, Sherban said.

However, she admits that would be costly for taxpayers. GFL’s existing trucks aren’t equipped to lift the carts to empty them and they would create problems for homeowners without space to store them.

Other solutions include:

• Switching to blue bags, although those could blow away
• Providing lids for existing blue boxes, although that would add to the town’s costs because it would take longer for collection crews to empty them
• Providing residents with additional blue boxes which now cost $10 each.

A spokesperson for GFL could not be reached for comment.

Blowing recyclable materials is not an issue only Whitchurch-Stouffville is grappling with, public works director Brian Kavanagh said.

“It’s an important issue, it’s one municipalities across Canada struggle with. There are pros and cons and limitations with blue boxes, with that design certainly,” he said.
“We’re always open to improvements and to change. We have to maintain a reasonable cost framework. There are obviously important tax dollars that we’re managing on behalf of residents. Obviously, we want to deliver that high quality service as well.”

The town, which spends $400,000 a year on its blue box program, has just started the second year of a multi-year contract with GFL, Kavanagh said. He added that the town does a major annual spring cleanup of garbage and additional pickups as needed.

The town has several tips for packing blue boxes properly, especially on windy days:

• Place heavier items on top, bundling cardboard and newspapers which can act as a lid over other items
• Ensure boxes aren’t overfilled
• Put bins out in the morning rather than at night
• Don't place them on top of snowbanks.
• Davidson wants to see the town investigate the possibility of using large recycling carts, but said the easiest solution is for residents to be more mindful when packing their existing blue boxes.

“I think those larger, heavier containers would go a long way to solving the problem, but it’s going to increase our taxes here because it’s a different kind of truck that has to be used to pick that larger, heavier box up and that means a substantial investment by the companies that do that stuff,” he said.

“There’s a cost to it. If you don’t want to see your taxes going up because of these larger blue boxes being mandated, start to use some common sense with the boxes we have.”