Bag-tag trash system will be a failed experiment

The Editor, Here we go again! If there’s one issue that rears its ugly head with astonishing regularity at Ottawa City Hall, it’s the topic of waste management and the latest scheme to reduce a core service. Although it never presented itself during the last election, suddenly we’re once again concerned about the projected lifespan of the Trail Road dump and the need to curtail the amount of waste collected. The answer, according to staff, is to severely limit the number of bags collected by introducing a bag tag system to penalize those who are discarding too much. Of course, the real answer is to improve diversion, which the city could accomplish in a variety of ways, none of which are being considered, naturally. Let’s face it, the city could use a carrot instead of a stick, but these folks don’t do carrots, only sticks.

Ironically, the solution was described in great detail in East Barrhaven councillor Wilson Lo’s column in the May 12, 2023 edition of the Barrhaven independent. Lo explained that he had grown up in the City of Markham, which had tried a similar bag tag system in the late 2000s that didn’t accomplish the goal of improving waste diversion--unless you’re referring to residents dumping their excess garbage in public refuse containers or construction site dumpsters. The point is, the bag tag system in Markham was a failed experiment (since abandoned) although Markham now boasts one of the “highest waste diversion rates in the country.” The bag tag system did not accomplish that, but what did was so sensible you honestly wonder why the City of Ottawa isn’t even contemplating it. The secret is to just make it easier for people to recycle! Rather than having different coloured bins collected bi-weekly on an alternating basis, everything goes into a blue box that is collected every week. As Lo explained it, “Markham collects all recyclables weekly and does not require residents to sort them (their waste collection contractor, coincidentally also Miller Waste, does that at a depot.)” Apparently that has worked so well that the City of Markham was able to cancel their bag tag system in the late 2010s.

Of course this is Ottawa, which means that our navelgazing municipal government can’t wait to repeat the failed experiment with bag tags, all the while anticipating a different result. It’s certainly clear that our former AM Talk Radio host of a Mayor has been guzzling the Koolaid provided by his staff and seems to be resigned to the inevitability of going the bagtag route, but let’s hope that Councillor Lo can convince his colleagues to consider a more sensible solution.

Andy Braid

municipal government ever since I started following politics. In fact, I became interested in municipal politics after Frank Scarpitti, the current mayor of my hometown, Markham, spoke at my high school in 2007 shortly after he was first elected Mayor.

As someone who’s introverted, I never actually wanted to be directly involved…but look where I ended up.

Politicians are nothing without community engagement, from sharing ideas to sharing complaints. Beyond the bigger picture, we can only fix hyper-local issues like a sewer grate that’s been clanging for years, or a dead grove of trees if we know about it.

I know Barrhaven East very well from my days driving the bus, but without you,

I would never have known Neill-Nesbitt Park was missing its garbage cans, or that there was a broken crosswalk button at Strandherd and Woodroffe. The issues have been resolved.

Unfortunately, most people are engaged the least with their municipal level of government. This makes sense, since we are the overseers of primarily day-to-day operations, which one may not notice until something goes wrong or goes missing. Admittedly, cynicism is also a factor.

Engagement is a two-way street and requires us to engage with residents, too. One of my goals during my term is to do just that, and I hope you’ll share in my journey towards greater civic engagement.