Yesterday I said I was putting off until tomorrow talking about garbage, organics and recycling in Saskatoon. Well, today is the tomorrow I was thinking about yesterday so I guess I’d better talk about it, or them. On Monday, City Council endorsed moving forward with a curbside pickup program for organic material and a companion program for composting the food and yard waste collected to help us divert more material from the landfill. All well and good. Now we will have a green bin beside our black bin for garbage and blue bin for recyclables. Council has yet to decide how we should pay for the new garbage and organics program. It could be by user fees through a waste utility rather than property taxes, or the organics could be paid for in property taxes, leaving garbage in a utility fee, or both garbage and organics could be paid for in property taxes. Then there is the suggestion of different sized garbage bins to encourage those of us who opt for a smaller bin to throw out less garbage and by doing so pay less, assuming it’s paid for by user fees rather than property taxes. And, of course, let’s not forget about our blue bins for recyclable materials excluding plastic bags and soon maybe glass. Is this all clear as mud? As Councillor Randy Donauer suggested, maybe City Hall is trying to do too much at once. I think maybe “maybe” isn’t the word.
That’s Coffeetalk. I’m Vic Dubois.