The head of the private company now responsible for collecting recyclables in the Greater Toronto Area says they’re trying to sort out issues with pick-ups amid a growing chorus of complaints.
Circular Materials, a national non-profit, assumed responsibility for coordinating a province-wide recycling program while Green For Life will handle curbside collections. The Ontario government ordered material producers to take the lead in picking up items as of Jan. 1.
As CityNews reported in recent days, residents in certain areas of midtown Toronto have been waiting for their materials to be picked up. Some of those impacted were waiting since Friday. With the start date of the new program falling on New Year’s Day, it affected collections.
“We’ve got people that haven’t had the recycling picked up and so I think really the goal is, can we get this recycling picked up as quickly as possible?” Allen Langdon, the CEO of Circular Materials, told CityNews Monday afternoon.
“We did this special recycling collection because there was going to be a change in the garbage schedule, so to accommodate that we arranged for this special recycling collection. So obviously we would like it to go better, but our hope is as we get into the regular recycling collection schedule that things will be much smoother.”
Complicating matters was that the Circular Materials call centre wasn’t operating on the weekend to field complaints from those affected.
“What we’re trying to do now is really make amends and make sure it gets picked up as quickly as possible, so we appreciate people’s patience. We know it’s especially challeng[ing] given that was happening over a weekend and so they weren’t necessarily able to get a hold of us,” Langdon said.
“It was a special collection day because of the change in garbage schedule, so typically we’d see a collection Tuesday to Friday and … typically having our customer service available 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday would be more than sufficient, but it would be something to look at if we end up in another situation where we require a Saturday collection.”
Toronto–St. Paul’s Coun. Josh Matlow called the missed recycling collections “unacceptable” and criticized the Ford government for the rollout of the new service. He said his office received emails from frustrated residents.
“Recycling is a service that is a basic, that people rely on every week or two, and they should be able expect that if it is going to be privatized that the job is going to be continuing,” he said.
“I don’t expect that most people actually care who does their recycling. They just want it done and they want it done well.”
Matlow argued there was greater accountability when recycling was under the City of Toronto’s jurisdiction.
During an unrelated news conference on Monday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford was asked about early issues with the new system. While he didn’t comment on the collection problems in Toronto, he said he’s heard complaints from the mayor of Aurora about the size of the bins being delivered to residents in that community.
“The company that’s doing it make no mistake: If it doesn’t work, we’ll change it like anything else,” Ford said.
“We’re trying to recycle as much as we possibly can. We’re really going after areas that we can utilize more recycling.”
“If it doesn’t work out, we’ll change it. That’s with any program we do, we tweak it, and a lot of governments they dig their heels in — I don’t. If it’s not working plain and simple, let’s make the changes — continuous improvement.”
Langdon didn’t disagree with Ford’s comments.
“Our response would be we agree the recycling needs to be picked up, needs to be picked up as soon as possible, and we’re taking any measure as possible to make sure that that happens as quickly as we can.”
For a list of Toronto recycling collection calendars, click here. Complaints about pick-ups can also be filed through here.
With files from Brandon Chogri
