Recycling - Ontario vs. NY

I always thought NY had a pretty decent recycling program. Not great, but decent.

DH and I have been in our house in ON for about a month now. When we first arrived we were informed that recycling and compost (blue boxes and green carts) were picked up once a week. However, garbage, instead of being picked up twice a week, was only picked up once EVERY OTHER week. And to top that off, you're limited to 6 bags of garbage!

We freaked out. How would this be possible? We put out 12 bags of garbage a week in NY sometimes!

Well, they recycle a LOT more than NY does. Paper milk and stock cartons, paper plates, napkins, facial tissues, ALL organics (food, bones etc). I had no idea how much room that sh!t took up in our garbage!

Let me tell you that it is possible to only put out six bags of garbage once every 2 weeks - we're doing it. We do get special tags for our diaper bags (the blue Diaper Genie ones) which are free but are limited to 30 per year.

Plus I feel much less guilty throwing out unfinished food knowing that it's going to compost and not sitting in a landfill somewhere (though the end result is probably the same).

I wish NY would follow suit. I can't believe how much less waste we have.

Re: Recycling - Ontario vs. NY

that's really interesting and sounds like a much better system than what we have around here.

But I'm biased, because I find that Canada runs things a lot more efficiently than America, anyway!

do you find people are more friendly?

Every Canadian I have ever met was really nice and down-to-earth.

Re: Recycling - Ontario vs. NY

Wow, that is really interesting. Something that I noticed here is that our recycling rules keep changing. Every year we get a letter from our sanitation department attached to the recycling bin, adding and sometimes removing things that they will now take in our recycling bin. Our recycling is taken every two weeks. I wish it was taken every week. We are able to recycle so much that I need multiple bins.

ETA: Ok the one thing that has always bothered me is that in Canada your milk comes in plastic bags.

Message edited 12/20/2011 12:10:46 AM.

Re: Recycling - Ontario vs. NY

That is awesome. I hate that the recycling comes every 2 weeks and that we are only allowed 1 bin. We have extra bags of stuff to recycle that only contribute to the waste. Also, there is a lot of stuff that we could be recycling that they won't take. I know on the Town of Babylon website it says no pizza boxes and other stuff. We try to recycle everything we possibly can, even if we aren't sure we put it in the bin and they can decide, better safe than sorry. My sister throws ALL her recyclables in the trash, I'm talking cans and bottles, glass, etc. It hurts my heart seeing that and I have explained over and over the importance of recycling and she won't listen. There should be a law, I would report her.

Re: Recycling - Ontario vs. NY

Even with a family of 4, and with the current NY recycling program, I think we could get by nearly every week with only 6 bags of garbage every 2 weeks. We recycle a LOT. We have no limits on how much we can recycle every other week. We always have a full-size garbage can of plastic/glass/metal (not the blue bins, they're too small), and sometimes a 2nd garbage can.
For cardboard/paper, we usually have several large boxes filled with paper. Much more than would fit in a blue bin.

6 bags every two weeks is 3 bags/week. We get pickup 2x a week, but we don't put stuff at the curb every time, and when we do, it's usually one can, which is basically one bag, so we're typically at 4 bags every 2 weeks.

We rarely use paper plates, we get plastic gallon milk jugs. Little things like that go a long way.

Re: Recycling - Ontario vs. NY

YAAAAY!!! Haha I love this! DH and I are heading home to Toronto to visit my family tomorrow. I have to say, when I first moved here I was a little confused at first with the lack of recycling programming in place in public spaces...I know it IS there but I guess it's just not as visible as it is back home?

I'm so excited to go home tomorrow! And thank you for starting my morning well with this thread- it made me smile!

Re: Recycling - Ontario vs. NY

Re: Recycling - Ontario vs. NY

here's my take on it

Anything Canadian is garbage and does not need recycling

Re: Recycling - Ontario vs. NY

Does it get smelly?

Re: Recycling - Ontario vs. NY

i live southwest of you in Ontario. down here we have garbage pick up once a week and recycle every other (smaller population so we get more frequent garbage pick up!)
we can put out 2 small garbage bins or one big one (4 bags total per week)

i take one small garbage bin out a week...we dont seem to have a ton of garbage at this house!
recylcing you can put out as much as your heart desires....has to be in the proper bins and bundled correctly though or they will leave it there!

Re: Recycling - Ontario vs. NY

I think that's great, but does your garage really smell after all that time? Ours does only after a few days, I can't imagine 2 weeks (then again it's always hot here so that makes it worse).

Re: Recycling - Ontario vs. NY

Re: Recycling - Ontario vs. NY

Re: Recycling - Ontario vs. NY

Re: Recycling - Ontario vs. NY

Wow that is awesome.