Trash talk: Ottawa’s garbage limit sparks mixed opinions

Nada Mishishi, a mother of two, was shocked to hear about the City of Ottawa placing a three-item garbage limit for residences.

“It’s not my fault, sometimes I buy groceries in huge amounts to save on money, so our garbage can sometimes be bigger,” said Mishishi.

Mishishi said she lives near Algonquin College and never got any notice from the city that this was happening. She believes the policy is unfair to people with growing families like her own, saying that because of inflation this economy is getting harder to live in.

On Sept. 30, the City of Ottawa announced it was putting a three-item garbage limit in place for residences to reduce the volume of waste going to the landfill.

The limit allows for garbage bags, a container up to 140 litres and one bulky item like a chair. The limit does not include diapers, casts, catheters or disposable pads.

However, going over the three-item limit requires households to buy special yellow bags, costing $4.40 each. The City of Ottawa web page has a table of where residents can find these bags for each region in Ottawa.

Chunzhong Yu, a Level 3 geographic information systems student at Algonquin College, lives near the college with four other roommates.

“As a student, I feel like the cost of the garbage bag is acceptable, but if someone is not recycling, this person should buy the extra garbage bags,” said Yu.

According to the overview of the City of Ottawa’s current waste management system, around 50 per cent of the city’s waste is made up of material that can be diverted from the landfill through the green bin program.

In addition to food waste, the green bin program collects grass clippings, leaves, hedge trimmings, cotton balls and pet fur.

“Basically, this policy is to encourage people to recycle more to divert more garbage going to the landfill,” said Coun. Theresa Kavanagh, who is on the City of Ottawa’s Environment and Climate Change Committee.

Kavanagh said the new curbside garbage restriction is a “modest proposal” since most people follow it already.

The City of Ottawa states on their garbage and recycling page that the city’s Trail Waste Facility landfill may reach maximum capacity in 13 to 15 years. The landfill is the second largest municipal landfill in Ontario.

“We have a landfill site and it has a certain capacity, it only has so many years that it can keep doing that, it’s only so big and we have to make it last as long as possible,” said Kavanagh.

Kelsey Burns, a new mother to eight-month old Molly who lives in the Algonquin area, heard about the garbage limit through neighbours, the news and flyers.

“Coming from a household that never recycled and separated any of their garbage I could see why there would be a limit on things,” said Burns.

“You have to start somewhere,” said Burns.

Kavanagh said the city has campaigns to explain the new policy.

“Our office gets calls because people got confused thinking the black box and blue box were part of the three items,” said Kavanagh.

“We had to tell them no-no,” said Kavanagh. “We are just talking about the garbage.”

“The blue box you can fill up till the cows come home.”

Tafara Divine Jonja, a Level 1 student in hospitality and tourism management at Algonquin College, is worried about how this policy will affect her relationship with her four roommates.

“It could cause arguments because people are now limited to stuff,” said Jonja.

“Plus this might also increase people looking for other ways to dispose their waste just to not fill the garbage.”