Should Toronto limit trash pickup to one side of the street?
Torontosun.com
Sept. 14, 2015
By Don Peat
Is Toronto throwing away cash by collecting garbage on both sides of the street?
Councillor Stephen Holyday wants to know whether the city could save money by having residents put their trash on a designated side of the road.
The Etobicoke Centre (Ward 3) councillor wants the public works committee to ask for a staff report next week on whether there would be any savings if residents put their bins on just one side of the street rather than out in front of each home on both sides.
Holyday admits the change might only work in suburban areas where there is space, but he argued it could mean waste is collected faster and cheaper because the collection truck would only have to go down each street once.
“I’m really thinking about my home in Etobicoke when I’m envisioning this,” Holyday told the Toronto Sun on Monday. “It would be a lot of effort to roll my bin an extra 30 or 33 feet (9 or 10 metres), the width of the road, and save half of the effort from (collection) crews.
“How it can translate across the city is something I want staff to look at.”
To balance out the bins, Holyday suggested homeowners would have to put garbage bins on one side of the street and recycling bins on the other side of the street.
“It is simply a way of getting better service, more efficient service and a tremendous cost saving,” Holyday said.
