Dear Editor,
This is an informative letter to the citizens of Ponoka regarding our Garbage collection issue which started in January 2016. There was a meeting at the town office on Oct. 31 at 11 a.m. with Mayor Rick Bonnet, CAO Albert Flootman, manager of operations Jill Owen and myself Edwin Geuder.
I brought up the old question why could the town not switch during the time from May 1 to Oct. 31 the grey bins with green bins. Concerns from citizens are still: smell and heavy grey bins. Here are my observations during this last six months and results from my own investigations in my area of 53 Avenue near downtown.
The green bins were not fully used and in many cases were not rolled out to the curb for collection, demonstrating that the green bin does not need to be collected weekly. Bi-weekly or even monthly would be sufficient.
The grey bin was fully loaded, stinky and heavy to roll in a bi-weekly cycle, and the grey bin should be collected weekly, then it is only 50 per cent filled, not smelly and easier for older people to handle.
In the blue bags “recyclables” I discovered that we placed items in there which shouldn’t be there, like Styrofoam, certain wrapping and foils, as well as lids and glass, which all belong into the grey bin. Only recyclables with the numbers 1 to 3 are recyclables, number 4 to 7 aren’t recyclable. It happens that the amount of blue bags got less and less and in a bi-weekly collection cycle there are only 1.5 bags per household, and the question is: should we collect those only once a month?
The focus should shift on real waste reduction and collection cost reduction, which would include a better green bin recycling system including kitchen waste, less plastic waste and blue bags with what really is recyclable, as well as a rewarding system for citizens who are reducing waste in general. Technology and information to do so is available and already practiced in part of Canada.
The town was very open for discussion and this time promised to look seriously into this matter and work on a solution for us, but we still have to be patient because they signed a two-year contract with GFL and have to find a way to change this contract.
I will keep you posted,
Edwin Geuder