Residents in Toronto’s former City of York will have their garbage collected by CUPE members again this week.
Toronto council voted recently to contract in several garbage collection services to both save money and make it easier to meet the city’s waste reduction goals.
The city expects using city workers to collect garbage in the former city’s 40,000 homes will will save some $4 million a year.
Apart from the savings, CUPE 416 President Brian Cochrane says the decision will make it easier for the city to meet its waste diversion targets.
“We’ve always said that for the city to meet its targets for recycling and waste diversion it needed to have more control over the waste stream - from curb to landfill,” Cochrane said. “Now we’re almost there.”
The city also contracted in pickup and disposal of discarded household appliances and some 250 three-holed public waste receptacles.
All that’s left is to contract in garbage collection in the former city of Etobicoke, Cochrane added. But where the former city of York could be covered by 12 new trucks and re-organizing existing routes, Etobicoke would require a much larger capital outlay.
