The city is testing the public’s garbage sorting know-how in the downtown.
Eight blue and grey waste carts – special ones with holes cut out of their lids – have been placed in the downtown area as a pilot program to determine whether the public can get the hang of separating trash placed into public cans.
“It is the direction the city is going for residential collection,” so it makes sense to take non-residential collection in that direction, too, said Heather Connell, manager of integrated services with the city’s Solid Waste Resources.
While the city is getting ready to roll out its cart-based residential waste collection program this fall, it is also working to see how the program might work in the downtown, and whether there should be changes made to the public garbage cans, she said.
“There are containers in the downtown that are currently needing replacement,” said Connell, explaining that the eight carts have been placed at those locations as a sort of soft launch for the pilot.
The carts are on the street in pairs – a blue one meant for recycling and a grey one meant for other waste.
“We have gotten some feedback from some businesses and residents that they’re happy to see that there has been some effort put toward waste diversion in the downtown,” said Connell of the initial response to the bins.
Residents of the downtown will not get their waste carts until 2014, but because the area has a unique demographic of multi-residential and mixed business and residential buildings, the city is meeting with residents and businesses now to see how the cart system will work in the downtown.
Some residents may want to have the option of depositing their waste in shared carts at street level, said Connell.
How this might work is part of what the city hopes to learn through its pilot, she said.
It also has meetings with the Downtown Guelph Business Association planned for the fall to discuss the carts, as well as the possibility of changing over all downtown garbage cans to ones aimed at separating waste, she said.