By Chris Beach

Northern View

The Northern View: Reduce Garbage Collection/Increase Recycling

Dec 7, 2023 | 3:32 PM

The city of Prince George is now considering reducing garbage pick up from once a week to once every two weeks and in my opinion there’s no question city council needs to pull the trigger on this and hopefully increase recycling pick up to once a week to make up the difference.

Why?

Quite simply because for households who are utilizing curbside recycling to take all the metal, plastic, cardboard and paper out of their garbage, their blue bins are overflowing while their garbage cans are often nearly empty.

If your garbage can is full, it’s likely you are not taking full advantage of the blue box recycling program that gets picked up right in front of your house.

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This Recycle BC program is a provincially funded program that is supported by the city, and so while it’s still all our tax dollars paying for it, there is much less of a direct local tax burden by utilizing this provincial program over our locally funded garbage pick up. And we need to remember that garbage is really expensive.

When you throw something away one naturally tends to think that’s the end of it… but it’s not… it’s just the beginning.

We have to pay for the labour to pick up that garbage; we have to pay for the specialized and expensive garbage truck; we have to maintain and eventually replace that expensive garbage truck; we have to pay the regional district to take the garbage; and if it gets buried, we have to monitor and take on the liability of that garbage… forever… the costs never end. So, if we can save a bundle and do the right thing for the environment, it’s a no brainer.

On social media in particular, many people have raised the issue of the bear problem. But if you keep your garbage secure, you will not have a bear problem. A bear lives behind my neighbors’ house, and it only bothers the people who leave their garbage out – never the people who secure their cans.

The huge spike in bears in the city last summer was not because of an increase in garbage – it was due to a severe lack of berries and food in the forest – another sign that we should be doing everything we can to limit our impact on climate change.

So there’s no question we should be taking full advantage of a provincially subsidized program that will decrease our carbon footprint and reduce the local tax burden. I’m Chris Beach and this is the Northern View.

Editors note: The views expressed in this column do not necessarily represent the views of Pattison Media.