That’s a load of garbage!

One thing Halton region does is provide waste services to the residents of Halton In Halton Hills our urban areas receive full waste, big pick up green cart and blue box service. Our rural areas receive Blue Box and green Cart service. Recently we asked Halton to look at what the cost would be to provide full garbage service to our rural area. They are looking at the cost s and we will go out to the residents with that information and develop a survey so we know what they would like to see. On average a home in Halton pays about $140 a year for the service.

The landfill site is located in Milton and cost many millions to plan, develop and build. It has a finite life and we will have to start looking at a new one in not too many years. The present one took well over a dozen years to get online. All of the initiatives like Blue Box and green cart work to enhance the life of our landfill. Why have items that can be recycled going to be buried in landfill?

Halton Region has a landfill site that is recognised for being a world class facility and frequently gets tours from people around the world seeing how we manage waste here.

Halton Hills was one of the first to pass a resolution asking for the province to bring in deposits for LCBO bottles and cans. When it came in it dropped the amount of material going into the Blue Box by 1%. It was over 12 million bottles the first year alone diverted from landfill.
Here are some numbers for Halton region for 2009 vs 2008
Waste Landfilled 2009 2008
Residential Garbage 61,952 71,071
Multi-Unit Front End Garbage 9,317 4,989
Front End Garbage Collected - Schools 2,896 -
Container Station: Garbage 11,092 11,633
Recycling & Organics Transfer Residual Waste 596 380
Organics Processing Residual Waste 1,923 1,071
Recycling Processing Residual Waste 3,756 2,882
Total Waste Landfilled 92,401 92,775
Total Material Collected 216,814 213,975
Diversion Rate 57.4% 56.6%

One of the ways we divert garbage is on the “Big pick up days” These days are popular and lead to a lot of items placed out for pick up being reused. As a matter of fact it is close to 50% of the items placed out for big pick up are gathered by others before the trucks arrive! With the high price of scrap metal, people will drive looking for old BBQ’s, chairs etc. I have seen antique tables, chairs and cupboards out for pick up. Bravo to these people for helping out! It is funny as I had my neice place a stroller at the end of my laneway for the big pick up. Someone swapped theres for the old one and left it behind!
The Greencart and Blue Box program has helped extend the life of our site. I had asked and pushed for household batteries to be dropped off at Town facilities and we are collecting about a tonne of them a year in Halton Hills.


If we all try and reduce what we throw out , recycle what we can and reuse items we can make a better environment for all of us. I know as a Councillor who sits on the joint waste management committee, we are always looking at ways to decrease the amount we have going into our landfill.
The Take it Back program that has people returning plastic bags to retailers is an example of the Region working with businesses to reduce landfill.
But we can’t do it alone and will need all of us to work together.