Sudbury garbage collection: 2 bag limit coming this fall

The number of garbage bags you can bring to the curb in Greater Sudbury is changing this fall.

Sudbury city council voted at a meeting on Tuesday night night to restrict household garbage bag limits over the next several years, starting with reducing the number of bags from three down to two per week.

The changes are as follows:

• Oct 2016 — reduce household garbage bag limit from three to two per week
• Oct 2019 — reduce limit to one bag per week
• Oct 2021 — switch to bi-weekly garbage pickup, two bags every two weeks

In a surprising turn of events, councillor Deb McIntosh got councillors to vote against recommendations that would see garbage collection kept as it is.

"When I read the report, I thought, 'how can you say "status quo," when all the numbers point towards changing things?'" McIntosh said.

Instead, she tabled her own recommendations to reduce bag limits, which councillors passed through.

McIntosh said 89 per cent of Sudburians only produce two bags of garbage or less, but the city has been paying to collect three bags at each home.

"We're paying for this 11 per cent who aren't sorting or reducing garbage," she said.

McIntosh estimates the changes will save the city $5.8 million in the next 25 years.

Montpellier, Kirwan oppose changes

Only councillors Gerry Montpellier and Robert Kirwan opposed the tightening of garbage bag limits. Kirwan told council the majority of people in his ward did not want a change.

"This is an example of council imposing a burden on a minority of people in our community. I can't support us doing that even though it may have a good cause and a good end result," Kirwan said.

"We will have inconvenienced and imposed a financial penalty on people for having that third bag."

But McIntosh said the change is the nudge that Sudburians need to start using the recycling and green bin program. Only about a third of the population currently use the municipal composting program, although the city pays for a composting truck to drive by each home.

"In a few years, no one will remember that they were complaining. They'll get used to it," McIntosh said, pointing to the reduction in plastic bag use once grocery stores started charging five cents a bag.

With the new changes, recycling and compost will remain available every week, with no limits. Exceptions will also be made to the garbage bag limit rule. For example, diapers can put any amount into a clear plastic garbage bag for pickup.

'Trash talk'

Before pitching her plan to council, McIntosh first took her proposal to a Grade 10 civics classroom at Confederation High, and asked them what they thought. She said students couldn't understand why the decision to reduce garbage bags hadn't been made already.

"Kids in the highschool class at Confederation, they got it," she said. "I showed them the numbers and they got it."

McIntosh said Sudbury is the only city in Ontario with a green bin program that still allows three garbage bags a week.

"Other communities have made this leap ahead of us," she said.

McIntosh pointed out that Sudbury's landfill only has a few decades left of use, and the Ministry of the Environment is not allowing any more landfills to be created.