Plastic bags alone won't dig us out of this mess

Just before Ottawa city council voted 19-3 to allow plastic bags in green bins starting in the summer of 2019, Coun. David Chernushenko put organic recycling naysayers on notice.

"You're out of excuses," Chernushenko warned Wednesday. "We've done all we can to make it convenient. It's your turn now."

• Plastic bags to be allowed in green bins starting next summer

An emptier threat has never been uttered.

As they have since the very birth of the green bin program, our civic leaders are yet again pleading with residents to do the right thing. 

You don't hear them cajoling motorists to pony up at the parking meter, or beseeching homeowners to pay for building permits. There are certain rules and regulations that the city just expects us to abide by.

But when it comes to garbage, politicians suddenly take on a certain timidity, and it's especially apparent in an election year.

Landfill has 25 years left

Allowing plastic bags in the green bins is not a perfect environmental solution, not by a long shot. If we care about the earth, we should be trying to limit the amounts of plastic we pump into it. This concern over council's appearance to condone plastic is precisely why three councillors voted against the plan.

Letting people wrap their kitchen waste and dog feces in plastic bags before tossing it into the green bin could be seen as the lesser of two evils. After all, plastic bags are already going to the landfill full of stuff that should be going into the green bin.

Under the new rules, we may still be using plastic bags, but at least we will be diverting that organic waste at the same time.

We need to recycle, and preferably reduce, more. At our current rate, our landfill will run out of room in about 25 years. Getting a new landfill going will cost more than $250 million. And who wants a dump in their neighbourhood?

That's a lot of dog poop

Our diversion rate has been stalled around 44 per cent, which includes multi-residential buildings. Only half of Ottawa's single-family homes bother using their green bins, and this council has done little to try to improve that situation over the past three years.

Plastic bags might help. In Toronto, where all plastic bags have been allowed from the start, the diversion rate is 52 per cent. Toronto also allows diapers and sanitary products in their green bins, so it's not clear how much of that city's higher diversion rate can be chalked up to the inclusion of plastic bags. 

In Kingston, Ont., where compostable plastic liner bags are allowed, the diversion rate is 60 per cent.

And the fact that dog poop — of which we send 4,000 tonnes a year to the dump — will also be allowed in the green bin, wrapped in plastic bags, could help boost the diversion rate. The city even plans to install green bins for this very purpose in parks across town in the summer of 2019.

(As for the great feline feces debate, CBC has clarified that cat waste, as well as litter, can go in the green bin even now. For some reason, the city's website doesn't explicitly explain this, but we've been assured it's true. You're welcome, Ottawa cat owners.)

Time for enforcement

The city isn't expecting a huge uptake in organics recycling due to the change to the plastic bag policy, forecasting only an additional diversion of 5,000 to 6,000 tonnes of organic waste. That's a paltry five per cent increase from what many see as a major policy shift.

That goal is even more pathetic when you consider that, after eight years of green bin education and communication campaigns, we still send more than half of the kitchen scraps and other organic waste that should be in the green bin to the city dump.

The city can try plastic bags as a carrot, but isn't it time for a stick, too? Where's the limit on the number of bags allowed at the curb? Right now, you can technically put out as many as six large bags full of trash every two weeks.

Or how about using the Kawartha Lakes model, where garbage must be put in clear plastic bags? If collectors see there are recyclables in the bag, they don't pick it up. That might change some habits in a hurry.

Then there are the apartment and condo buildings. The city collects garbage at more than 1,600 multi-residential building, which is generally cheaper than hiring a private collection service. The city mandates that these buildings have blue and black box recycling, but the organics program is merely optional.

Only about a quarter of the buildings offer a green bin service to their tenants.

With the addition of plastic bags, the green bin program needs to be mandatory at all buildings that receive garbage collection from the city. That's how it works in Toronto, and there's no reason that it can't work here.

Tougher rules work

Will people complain if the city brings in tougher rules around garbage? Very likely. And that's why many councillors don't want to utter the word "enforcement" before the October election.

Case in point: the move to biweekly trash pickup back in 2012 was controversial, with a number of residents arguing the city was decreasing a basic service, and a few councillors voting against it.

Some candidates in the 2014 election even ran on reversing the decision, though none won.

But what actually happened when the new pickup schedule came in? People recycled more. The diversion rate for curbside pickup jumped from 42 per cent to more than 50 per cent. That's a huge improvement.

More than half of what we send to the Trail Road landfill could be composted or recycled. As taxpayers, we spend a lot of money to run these programs. And environmentally speaking, recycling is a better alternative than filling a giant hole in the ground with garbage.

But if neither of these reasons is enough to spur residents to act voluntarily, then more forceful measures are required. Simply introducing plastic bags into the mix isn't going to be the panacea some seem to think.