Calgary’s pay-as-you-throw black cart collection proposal back at city hall

The proposed pay-as-you-throw program for residential black cart collection is back at a City Hall committee Wednesday.

The administration is recommending Calgarians get the option to pay for one of three sizes of bin: 120 litre, the current 240 litre, and 360 litre, as well as the option to tag-a-bag which would allow them to pay for extra garbage left out for pick up.

Councillor Druh Farrell tells CityNews, it’s something they’ve been talking about for years.

“We recognize that we needed to bring in easy blue cart and green cart and then if someone is generating way more garbage than average, then they should be paying for that,” she said.

“What we realized over all these years is that waste is expensive, it never goes away, our landfills continue to haunt us many generations into the future and so let’s try and reduce our waste, we have a long way to go.”

Conor Tapp, Executive Director of the Green Calgary Association, concedes any program which inspires homeowners to do more environmentally will have a cost associated with it.

“In the long run though, what we’re going to see is an overall cost reduction,” he explained.

“As we front-load these types of programs, we do see homeowners having to pick up a little bit more and the city will inevitably will have to pick up a little bit more as well.”

Calgarians seem to like the idea of paying for the bin size which fits their lifestyle.

“I would love to pay less, of course, who wouldn’t?” laughed Cindy.

“It makes sense because not a lot of people make a lot of garbage,” said Tamara.

But, it’s yet to be seen how it will be received overall.

“I don’t know how an additional processing charge to the end user, how that will play out, I have my doubts on that but let’s see,” said Kedar.