Toronto trash full of recyclables

Residential trash 80 percent full of recyclables Town Crier audit shows
That’s prior to summer 2009 garbage strike
By Sandie Benitah, Kris Scheuer and Eric McMillan
(Originally published in Town Crier Feb. 07 as a follow-up to a Dec/05 story)

Eric McMillan sorts thru 40 bags of residential trash. Pile on right is recyclables.

A year later, nothing has changed.
At the end of 2005, a Town Crier analysis of household garbage showed about 80 percent of what we were throwing out as trash could easily have been recycled in blue boxes and green bins.
In the year since then the disposal of Toronto’s million tonnes of garbage has been a major issue, with fights over whether to incinerate it, ship it to Michigan or bury it near London.
Here’s a suggestion: Just recycle it.
Twelve months after our original survey, the Town Crier has found that — still — most of our so-called garbage is recyclable.
For two weeks reporters collected garbage bags left at residential curbsides in Toronto: 40 bags in total, five selected randomly from each of our eight coverage areas.

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Toronto eyes recyclable coffee cups

City mulls plan to require coffee shops to provide a paper lid for disposable cups
By Kris Scheuer
Originally published Nov.13.08

The city’s shining a spotlight on the disposable coffee cup you’re holding and the estimated 365 million of them Torontonians throwaway each year. City staff is grappling with how to divert that cup from landfill and who should pay to make the hot drink cups and lids compatible with the existing blue bin. A recent city hall report recommended a mandatory 20-cent discount for people who bring their own mug to a coffee shop for their java fix. It also gave retailers such as Tim Hortons and Starbucks until the end of next year to ditch the plastic lid and develop a paper alternative to top their paper coffee cups.  These proposals unleashed a heated nine-hour debate the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee on Nov. 12. After all that, councillors voted to defer a decision until next April (since extended to fall/09). So now what?