Saskatoon committee to debate garbage cart sizes for new pay-as-you-throw system

City councillors will be talking about upcoming changes to garbage pickup at an environment committee meeting on Tuesday.

Starting in 2024, the city will move to a variable garbage cart utility system, where households will be able to choose from more than one size of cart and pay more or less accordingly. As part of the change, taxpayers will pay for garbage through a separate utility bill, rather than through property taxes.

"It provides residents with more variability and more options to meet their garbage disposal needs," said Brock Storey, acting director of water and waste stream with the City of Saskatoon.

"The whole point of the garbage utility is that residents have the transparency for what their garbage costs are."

At the meeting, councillors will be asked to choose between two separate options for thecart sizes to be offered three sizes (the 360 L carts currently used, 240 L and 180 L) or two sizes (360 L and 240 L).

Administration is recommending the three-cart option andestimatesthe program will cost $4.5 million. Storey said that cost would include buying new, smaller bins and modifying garbage trucks to pick them up.

Storey said it was too early to say how much each cart would cost homeowners every month. However, during discussions on the new systemheld last year, the city estimated an average household would pay $24.05 per month including organics pickup under the new system.

The new program is expected to divert 5,000 to 16,000 tonnes of garbage out of the landfill, improving the overall waste diversion rate byfive to 17 per cent.

The city also estimates the program will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3,000 to 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

Talking trash

There are some council members who believe that the new policy could be improved.

Ward 1 Coun.Darren Hill has long been an opponent of the variable cart policy, advocating for other changes to the garbage collection system.

He said the projected cost of the program is too high compared to the amount of trash the project is expected to divert from the landfill.

"That's a considerable amount of money for a waste utility that has been underfunded for a number of years," he said.

"We have to be very careful of what we are going to be burdening the citizens of Saskatoon with."

Hill would prefer either a bag and tag system, where individual bags of garbage are thrown into garbage trucks and counted, or a system where people are charged based on the weight of garbage in their cart.

The city report rules out either of these approaches.

The city said that the bag and tag system would cost even more money and require extra staff to physically pick up the bags and put them in the trucks.

Meanwhile, weighing the garbage would be problematic, as it would be too easy for people to put garbage in someone else's bin, leading to the wrong personbeing billed.

Hill said he was concerned that the variable cart size plan won't be very successful in minimizing garbage heading to the landfill.

"I think there's going to need to be a lot of education before it becomes even close to being the five per cent diversion rate that they're expecting out of this."

If approved, the decision will need to be ratified at the next city council meeting.