New Program - Same as the old
Consumers just pay more?
At last night's city council meeting our new manager of sanitation, Ms Charlotte Davis addressed city council and explained some of the changes being made to the curbside recycling program. One change is the elimination of the blue bag for newspapers and flyers, as both of these products can now go into the yellow bag. Residents can put as many yellow bags at the curb as they desire.
In addition to this change a few more items will be accepted in the yellow bag most notable aerosol can (some restrictions), paper cups, milk and cream cartons, aseptic boxes and cartons, plastic clamshells, plastic plant pots and seedling trays to name a few.
Not being accepted curbside is glass containers, plastic bags, film plastic or foam plastic. These items must be taken to a drop-off depot or put in with your regular garbage. A complete list of the changes is available in the most recent copy of the Waste-Line newsletter which has been sent to all Nanaimo households.
Consumer will pay for increased fees levied on producer
The premise behind the new program is that by charging the companies which produce and package products, they will be forced by market pressures to reduce their packaging. Sounds good, but is it likely to play out that way in the marketplace? Companies are in business to earn a profit and all additional costs eventually are born by the consumer of their products, and that is you and I.
In the end, what this really means is that the consumer will end up paying more money to see these products go into some kind of recycling program, which may or may not actually see the products being recycled. Readers of this blog realize, that much of what we think is recycled is actually resorted, re-sold and re-shipped to some foreign country where they put it into their garbage heaps.
There is also considerable burdens now being placed on small businesses who must comply with the new program or face harsh fines. This new program can hardly be considered business friendly on any level and like other poorly thought out plans will end up costing all consumers in the long run.
Looks like we aren't allowed to put in a bunch of different items in the recycling bins as we used to. I will now be going to buy garbage tags and will have to put out more garbage than we are allowed and now I have to pay for it. Terrible move on the city for changing what wasn't broken. But that's what Nanaimo does.
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