Weathering Toronto’s Municipal Workers Strike

Toronto is nearing 1 month of no garbage pickup

Toronto is in the midst of a municipal worker’s strike. We’re coming up to almost one month without city services such as garbage and recycling pickup. To tell you the truth, though I would like to take the kids to the swimming pool on a hot day, the lack of garbage pickup has not bothered me much. Then again we do live in the suburbs. Yesterday a new temporary garbage dump has opened less than a kilometer from my house, so maybe I’ll change my mind within the next month or so.

It took more than 3 weeks of no garbage pickup to accumulate enough garbage to warrant a trip to the makeshift dump. And even then we only had one bag of garbage. You see, our family recycles a lot, so green and regular garbage is minimal. We also compost all vegetable kitchen scraps. When maggots were making their appearance, I decided it was time to dump.

Sure the weather has not been very hot, so this has helped keep the smell down. Our garbage is stored in sealed containers, so flies cannot enter. There is the smell, slightly stronger than usual.

Our recycling bin is near full, so we need to make some plans in the next couple of weeks, but recycling contains no food or meat, so it does not smell. Keep it dry and away from the rain and it can be stored for long periods of time.

There have been some minor accommodations in our shopping habits. When shopping I also note the packaging. If it’s shrink wrapped in plastic I take a pass. They are hard to open, are somewhat of a safety hazard, and cannot be recycled. Saying “no” to these packages is easy. I’ve also stopped trimming our trees because there is also no yard waste pickup. If I trim our trees, where do I store the branches?

I’ve actually come to the conclusion that we could live with garbage collection every other week. It’s not so bad, as we simply don’t have a lot to throw out. With every negative event, there is always a positive aspect.