Trash Talking
To be fair to larger households, Ottawa City Council should ensure that everyone pays their share for waste disposal.
First off, my apologies for the uneven publishing schedule. I started working as an on-call supply teacher in June. Starting a new job in education in the last two weeks of June is not for the faint of heart! As a result, this post is three weeks late and the solid waste master plan is long gone from local news, but I still have thoughts about it.
Ottawa’s plan to curb landfill use by setting up a “pay-as-you-throw” system has hit the usual snags: conservative politics, environmental agnosticism, and a general unwillingness to make tough choices. Councillor Matt Luloff has been a vocal opponent of the garbage bag limit for the reasons listed above, claiming among other things that it « unfairly punishes large families. »
As a mother of 9, I felt compelled to reply. Councillor Luloff is right that the policy is inequitable but the conclusion that everyone should be allowed to send as much garbage to the landfill as a large household for equity’s sake is not the solution. What we need are bag limits and financial incentives that apply to everyone.
Bag limits per residence are inequitable because they don’t consider the size of the household. Large families, inter-generational households, and co-housing arrangements make a more efficient use of space — especially in low-density suburbs — than couples and smaller families. This is not a value judgment on the virtue of large families but a simple calculation on the space that each person occupies in the city: square footage divided by person. When my family of 11 lived in an affluent east-end suburb, we occupied every square inch of our 3500 sq. ft. home. My neighbours were mostly retired or childless couples living in the same sprawling accommodations. Every home was serviced by the same size of pipes, the same sidewalks the same outdoor lighting, the same stormwater management facility. Every single family home with 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms is built to support at least 10 people but most homes are inhabited by less than half of that.
Setting a firm bag limit per residence burdens those who form larger households and leaves the average households unbothered. This may be fair (more people = more waste) but it is not equitable. If you take in your aging parents and form a multi-generational household, you will use city resources more efficiently and lighten up the long-term care system. For this wonderful contribution to social cohesion and fiscal restraint, you will be charged more to dispose of your household waste than if everyone had stayed in separate dwellings. 3 bags here plus 3 bags there equals 6 bags. Yet, these 6 bags will be free if you send a 3-crew, 16-ton, diesel-powered garbage truck to collect them at two different addresses but not if you form one household.
Someone once asked me « How is this different than paying more on your water bill because you use more water? Or having to buy a larger vehicle?» Because the price per cubic meter of water or per vehicular square inch is the same for everyone. If I consume more, I pay more. As the mother of a large family, I expect to pay for the food we eat and the goods we consume in proportion to my family’s size. Higher consumption is not where the inequity lies with bag limits. The proper comparison would be if the first 1000 daily cubic meters of water were free. Households up to about 4 people would never see a water bill while larger households would. The water costs the same price to bring to every home, just like the garbage truck costs the same to get to every door. Yet, only some households will have to pay extra for that privilege. To quote my 9 year-old: “That’s not fair!”
The inequity of the thing is simple math. My household averages 6 people over a 2-week period. In 2022, the average household size in Ottawa was 2.3 people (1,067,310 residents divided by 457,070 households). If each household is allowed to put 3 containers of garbage to the curb every other week without paying a surcharge, it means that each member of the average household can put 1.3 containers of waste to the curb every two weeks. 1.3 containers of waste is 182L of garbage per person, a monumental amount of trash***. In a household with 8 people, each member of the household is allowed to send 0.4 containers of trash to the landfill every other week without paying a surcharge. And so it goes: the larger the household, the smaller the amount of trash one can produce without being charged. That’s the inequity. This is not a simple matter of paying more because you have a larger household: larger households are held to a higher standard of restraint than anyone else. Curbing our waste addiction should be everyone’s problem. Individuals who are allowed to send 182L of trash to the landfill bi-weekly – most of Ottawa residents – will never have to learn waste discipline.
*** My household of 4-8 people puts out about 1.3 containers of garbage bi-weekly. Read the post-scriptum to learn more about how we manage waste in a large household.
The original solid waste master plan’s 2-bag limit would have squeezed most households in proportion of their size. The compromise 3-bag limit will make no material difference to the average household and once again put the squeeze on larger households only. The elimination of bag tags from the original plan adds insult to injury, preventing larger households from saving their extra bag tags or getting unused tags from friends and neighbours. In their eagerness to speak on behalf of larger households without actually speaking to one, City Council managed to put the burden of change on my shoulders while removing the one relief measure (bag tags) I could have used. With friends like these…
The inequity in the program is not that it burdens large families in proportion to their size, it’s that it doesn’t burden average households at all. City Council has once again managed to enact half-measures that will annoy people just enough to affect its credibility but not enough to make a difference in its long-term environmental or fiscal goals.
Larger households are used to paying more for consumer goods. We don’t expect a break, believe me. But we do resent when everyone else gets a break at our expense. If Ottawa City Council really wanted to be fair to large households, it would make sure that everyone pays their share.
Post-scriptum
How much trash does our household of 8 put out every two weeks?
About 1 container (containers for the purpose of the policy are 140L but we use a 121L garbage can).
Waste management in a large family is a lesson that you learn early and often. When you feed 8 people three times a day, you cannot hold on to organic waste for 2 weeks. Not only does it stink, it also takes up storage space that you need for things like bikes. We live in a 3-bedroom, single-car garage, interior unit townhouse. There is nowhere to store two-weeks worth of trash: everything that can be picked up on a weekly basis has to go. Even missing a recycling collection is problematic from a space management perspective.
Are kids and teenagers enthusiastic about using the green bin? No. We often need to call people to the kitchen and go through the garbage with them: this Subway wrapper with a half a sandwich goes in the compost, this plastic Iced Cappucino cup needs to be rinsed out and put in the blue bin, and so on. Is it a pain in the butt? Yes it is. Raising children to pick-up after themselves is generally a pain in the butt.
One of Council’s concerns during the trash debates was that people needed “more education.” Was I born with infused knowledge of Ottawa’s trash policy? No, I was not. Do you know why I learned to go down to 1.3 containers of trash bi-weekly? Because as the head of the household and bearer of the mental load, not doing so cost me too much. Not in dollars yet, mostly in aggravation. Before embracing the green bin life, I had to fight off maggot infestations, racoons, odours, and having to climb over piles of trash every time I needed to get a bike out of the garage. Have you ever had to pick up every piece of trash your family produced over a two-week period because a raccoon or a dog got to it? Nothing puts you in front of your consumer life choices like beholding your trash piece by piece as you pick it off your front lawn. Today, our garbage is 97% plastic wrappers and styrofoam food packaging. We put out at least two blue bins and two black bins of recyclables weekly and a full green bin or more. Our family also provides a green bin for dog waste at a nearby park that we put to the curb weekly.
I educated myself because I had to. The reason residents of Ottawa are slow to adopt waste sorting and poorly informed about what goes where is not because we haven’t yet designed the perfect flyer. It’s because our timid attempts at convincing people to do the right thing have not made them responsible for the trash they put out. Don’t be afraid to make people live with their garbage and I promise they will find the information they need.