By Joel Ceausu
The Suburban
Daniel Lanci was incensed last week, incensed that while he listened to Rivière des Prairies-Pointe aux Trembles Borough Mayor Chantal Rouleau talk on the radio about helping residents with their recycling, he felt forced to stockpile garbage in his garage for a whole week.
“I have to move the bags out of the way every time I leave the garage, or let it accumulate outside” he told The Suburban. Squirrels and cats already have a field day. Wait until the weather warms up, it’s going to be raccoon central here,” said the Rivière des Prairies homeowner.
Rouleau was on CBC Radio Friday morning talking about the borough’s new move on garbage collection, which is designed to help increase recycling by 10 percent immediately and almost 30 percent over the next few years. Residents began the New Year with new rules, including a cut in their garbage collection from two days to one, which many residents find as unpleasant as holiday hangovers and credit card bills.
While most knew of the plan, which The Suburban reported last year, the actual application without increased related services left many fuming. “We are only getting our larger recycling bins in spring,” said Lanci. “So my choices are: go out and buy another garbage can from Réno Depot to accommodate it; buy another blue box to fill and carry outside and stack up, or to hell with recycling, just spend more time stuffing more garbage into my garbage bin so they can pick it up once a week. I’m probably going with that.”
One caller to the radio program mentioned that as a daycare operator she is forced to accumulate mountains of spoiled diapers to accommodate the new rules. Rouleau acknowledged it was not easy to adapt to a new practice: “We know that it will take maybe a few weeks to adopt a new habit, but we just started and we want to help residents.” She said 40 percent of people already put garbage out only once a week with no incentive, so she is confident that this new system — once-weekly collection along with a larger 360-litre wheeled recycling bin — will prove a hit.
The problem, RDP says resident Grace Moretta, is the delay between the two. “They should have given us something when they took away the extra garbage pickup. That would have been more fair instead of rushing it.”
Rouleau says that many other municipalities have once-weekly collection, citing Repentigny, Laval, Ottawa and Dorval. “We are ready,” she insists. “All boroughs will have to do it eventually but we are the first.”
The opposition favours the objective, but not the administration’s execution. A similar move was planned by Union Montréal which lost the last election, says Rivière des Prairies city councillor Maria Calderone. “The principle of one weekly collection is possible but you have to take the time to do it right. You have to involve, consult and inform citizens, then put a pilot project in place, evaluate the results and make the necessary changes to meet their concerns.” Her Union colleague borough councillor Giovanni Rapanà agrees. “This dossier was mishandled from the beginning. The resolution (announcing the change) was adopted without any citizen consultations and a press release confirming its adoption had been issued even before the council meeting, where decisions must be made. It’s quite strange coming from Mayor Rouleau who promised to consult citizens.”
But Rouleau is unfazed, and reminds residents that the goal is to ultimately reduce garbage going to landfill. “We will support the people,” she insisted. “We don’t want them to be angry about it.” Too late, says Lanci. “Unless the borough gives me a magic wand until the bins arrive, so I can make a giant pile of garbage fit into a normal garbage bin.”
