Should Calgary adopt pay-as-you-throw garbage collection?
Posted Oct 16, 2018 11:28 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
CALGARY (660 NEWS) – Could Calgary use a ‘pay-as-you-throw’ system?
A new report from Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission suggests it may help cut down on all the garbage we toss away.
Researcher Lindsay Tedds, an economics professor at the University of Calgary, said people would pay according to the amount of waste they generate.
“What we have is a system in place in most municipalities where people just put their garbage out and they don’t think about it much, and as a consequence, they’re producing more garbage that is going to the landfill than before,” Tedds said.
She said the City of Calgary is slowly moving in this direction already, rolling out an increase in user fees, and allowing choice in bin size.
“But we could go even further and use some of the models that are in place in Europe, or some cities in Canada which also allows people to save money by not putting their bins out every time,” Tedds said.
“And our bins already have these radio frequency devices in it. We could in fact move as far as ensuring people only pay when they actually put their garbage out.”
Tedds said it’s not about paying more, it’s about paying differently.
“I think you would find a large portion of households would pay less under the user fee model, than under the property tax system.”
She said Calgary’s landfill will be full in 30 years, and then we will have to spend at least $1.5-billion to build another one, so we need to start thinking seriously about waste.
