Raise the Hammer

Yeah the plastic shopping bag ban. Absolutely ridiculous, what a typical all show no go feel good puff of smoke. Don't enhance the "blue box" or increase what will be recycled no that's too much like real work requiring actual thought and partnership with private enterprise. Citizens do not elect councilors because they need more authority figures in their lives placing all the burden of recycling on their backs. Council is attempting to use bylaws to do the impossible. Clear plastic bags, what nonsense an excuse for someone to decide if the cracked jar inside is an excuse to place a samrmy OOPS sticker and leave one full bag curbside for my next one full bag pick up. I don't control the packaging or content of any product I buy. I can wring my hands all I want but I have more to be concerned about then agonizing over the disposition of every purchase at the end of its use. Governments do have control over packaging, content and more. If it is sold in this city province or country it should be able to be recycled or disposed of in same (with obvious exceptions like chemicals etc.). Leaving citizens stuck with garbage is not the solution. Our politicians at all levels must make this a priority, no one else can. We are still using a temporary measure like blue box when what is needed is separation equipment for recyclable items numbering in the hundreds not the paltry stagnant few we have now. Here is a clue for every politician out there especially city council. The easier you help to make recycling the more people will recycle. Work on that not punitive and annoying OOPS stickers. I have been stickered for no apparent reason more than once and placed the supposed offending article prominently the next week when someone picks it up who either knew it was permitted or who was not concerned with filling a quota. I have also had bags stickered as too heavy when they were only 60% of the allowable weight. To make matters even worse the garbage truck does not even have a scale, so it has to be someone's guess or possibly the filling of a quota. The blue box needs to be a marked recyclable can, filled with unsorted unwashed recyclables. The key here being unwashed as we currently have hundreds of thousands of people with no where to store cans bottles and food related recyclable materials who must wash these items to avoid odour and pests. All these items when they are processed for recycling are cleaned as if they had never been cleaned to avoid the possibility of contamination. Therefore every drop of water and minute of time spent by the householder in pre treating these items is wasted. The waste in water resource alone is staggering. These things are just the obvious easily corrected issues I would have expected to have been addressed 20 years ago. Maybe 10 years from now all levels of government will do what is required of them instead of making the average citizen responsible for their short sightedness.