You may think covering city hall is a glamorous assignment. You would be wrong. But it’s always interesting.
This week, I tuned into the City of Hamilton Waste Subcommittee meeting, which was streamed online on Thursday afternoon.
In my experience, as both a community news editor and a Flamborough resident, waste management is one of the top two city services people love to talk about. (The other, if you’re wondering, is snow removal). After all, everyone has trash. And nobody wants to think about what happens to it after it goes to the curb on garbage day.
Anyway, this week’s meeting didn’t disappoint.
According to a nifty chart posted on the city’s website, waste management is surprisingly low on the scale when it comes to annual tax dollars. Of an average home’s $5,076 annual bill, just $223, or about 4.5 per cent, is devoted to taking out the trash (and blue and green bins). Using this number (pardon my math skills), that would amount to about $105 million (give or take a couple hundred thousand dollars) of the 2024 municipal budget of $2.4 billion.
Although it's a small piece of the pie, it adds up to a respectable chunk of cash.
I was suitably impressed by Thursday’s hour-long discussion, which efficiently covered a range of topics, including statistics on the trash tag program, ideas for a commercial incentive program and upcoming education campaigns.
But the issue that really caught my attention was a pilot program aimed at getting folks to use refillable coffee cups at city-run facilities. Senior waste management project manager Ryan Kent presented findings from the program that ran between February and April at three municipal arenas. In a nutshell, the price of coffee and tea was reduced by 15 cents for people who brought their own cup.
For someone who is pretty, uh, frugal, this is right in my wheelhouse. Save money and help the environment? What’s not to love?
The crux of the matter was whether to use the carrot or the stick to market the program, i.e. promote it as a 15-cent discount for those who bring their cup, or as a 15-cent surcharge for those who don’t.
Unfortunately, due to the Feb. 25 cyberattack that knocked out city systems, staff were unable to collect enough data to determine what might work best (the plan is to continue the initiative this fall to garner more info).
One committee member highlighted that the big coffee chains have long struggled to promote this very thing, with very little effect. As anyone who has participated in a community cleanup can tell you, there is a mountain of used Tim's, Starbucks and McDonald's hot beverage cups dotted along every roadside.
Problem-solver that I am, I couldn’t help concluding that a stronger approach is required; changing people’s behaviour is not for the faint of heart, after all.
What’s needed here is the strategy that knocked the ubiquitous plastic bag right out of grocery stores. We need to act like using a refillable cup is the norm, and using a paper cup is the exception.
For example, when someone steps up to the counter and asks for a large tea with the bag in, the server would ask, “Did you bring a reusable cup today? Or would you like to purchase one?”
I’m fully aware that this will not be popular, and that what I’m suggesting would likely require some legislation to bring everyone on board. And that I will cuss as loudly as the next guy when it happens to me. Just like I did when they started to charge for plastic bags, and again when I had to start purchasing the pricier cloth version.
But I learned. After sucking it up and buying a new set of cloth bags every time I forgot them (I didn’t say I was a quick study), I now keep cloth bags in all vehicles I may ever travel in, at all times. And I’ve noticed that nobody has to pick up plastic grocery bags from the side of the road any more.
Hey, if I can learn, anyone can. Now could somebody please pour me a double-double. To go.
The F Files is a regular column featuring the opinions of FlamboroughToday writers on a variety of local topics.
