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EDITORIAL

Taking out the garbage

March 10, 2003

City of Toronto residents have long suspected that there is something wrong with the way city council handles garbage pick-up.

City workers refuse garbage on downtown city streets if it isn’t put out in special yellow bags. Taxpayers in Etobicoke complain a rodent infestation is the aftermath of their twice-a-month garbage pick-up, while their North York counterparts enjoy garbage pick up twice a week.

According to mayoral candidate, former Budget Chief Tom Jakobek, "we need to re-invent how we deliver services to our citizens.

"I’ll give you one example--garbage collection. Some on council believe we should simply privatize the operations. Others talk about reducing the amount of garbage we have. There are excellent points on both sides, but neither solves the systemic problems and additional costs associated with old methodologies and poor management.

"Every week I put out my Blue Box, Grey Box, yard waste, and regular garbage. In some places, the city has added the "Green Torpedo." What is the result? Once a week, three or four separate rear-end loaders, each with a crew of two, come down the same streets to the same houses to pick it up. Talk about waste! This is not efficient--and not sustainable.

"We need to re-design our system, regardless of who picks up the garbage, and we need to invest in something more imaginative than a rear end loader that was designed 40 years ago. Not only is our current collection system too costly, but too much of the recyclables that you and I carefully sort end up in the same garbage dump, due to our antiquated system of collection."

Then there’s OMG, which holds a contract with the city to place and maintain 3700 recycling bins on street corners.

The head of the city’s public works department recently called for police to investigate possible links between a reputed Mafia godfather and OMG Media Inc.

The potential for a connection traces its roots to court records in Montreal over an impaired driving charge against Vito Rizzuto, whom the government once described as "the godfather of the Italian Mafia in Montreal."

When Rizzuto was pulled over by city police in the early hours of May 30, 2002, he was driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee registered to OMG, according to the police report.

OMG’s thousands of steel bins have separate holes for bottles and cans, newspapers and trash. The city empties the bins and OMG is responsible for keeping their outsides clean.

Coun. Brad Duguid, chairman of the Works Committee, said the bins have been largely successful.

"There has been a public benefit to having their litter containers on our streets. They provide an opportunity for people to recycle on the streets, and it promotes a cleaner city.

OMG stainless steel boxes replaced city trash bins to allow for the diverting of recyclable material in the late 1990s.

Municipalities pay no up-front costs for the bins, and get 5 percent of the advertising space to promote a city’s message. OMG then pays municipalities a monthly fee for each box it places on the street–regardless of whether there is paid advertising on the box.

OMG has so far failed to turn a profit by selling advertising on the boxes.

Little wonder why the City of Toronto is having mammoth problems just taking out the garbage.