The following letter to the editor was submitted to CollingwoodToday.ca in response to the upcoming rollout of a new curbside collection system that will include new bins for most residents in Simcoe County outside of Barrie and Orillia. You can read about it here.
CollingwoodToday welcomes letters to the editor. They can be sent to [email protected].
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Editor,
I would like to write on behalf of my mother who lives alone in a house in Collingwood.
Her driveway is adequate to contain and roll down these bins to the edge of her
road. Her driveway is only about fifty feet long.
So what it’s the problem, you ask? My mom is 98 years old. She eats sparingly and makes little garbage on her diet of veggies, meat, potatoes, bread, soup, tea and milk. She puts her garbage out every other collection day, and then the bag is only half full.
Even with the waste of doggie bags from her faithful Aussie shepherd dog, she doesn’t come close to filling the green bin. At most, she fills a single compost bag per week.
The blue recycle bag goes out once a month, too.
And how is a 98-year-old going to get these bins to the road in winter?
They will have to be rolled out by myself on Sunday night and we will hope that they do not get buried by a snowfall before morning.
My only thought is that we could approach her neighbours and ask if she could piggyback her refuse with their contributions each week.
Perhaps the county could entertain the idea of ‘neighbourhood bins’ in areas of single people where the residents could pool their garbage.
We live close to my mother, not next door, but across town in Collingwood.
A third alternative may be that we incorporate her garbage with ours, and perhaps that is the best and most obvious solution. OK for us.
But what about all the other elderly, incapacitated, people in Simcoe County.
Surely our situation is not unique.
We are an adult family of three with two cats and even we cannot envisage the need for these huge bins unless they are being picked up monthly. It feels like an industrial-sized solution to a very urban/residential problem.
Perhaps some thought should be given to the entire plan, for which it appears the main concern is cost, ie: the number of people needed to effectively collect our garbage.
So when all the people who presently collect our refuse are laid off, how does that balance with the outgoing EI and welfare payment that may result?
Just a question?
Paulette Dennis
Collingwood ON
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