Nine days into the new year, and Toronto’s now privatized recycling program is off to a rough start as overflowing blue bins in several North York neighbourhoods are still waiting to be picked up.
As of January 1, Circular Materials, a national non-profit, has taken over coordination of the recycling program from municipalities after the Ford government ordered material producers to take the lead in picking up items. Green For Life is responsible for handling the actual curbside collections.
“GFL is a well-known company that has a good track record, so I’m very surprised, but I think their resources are spread too thin,” said Coun. James Pasternak. “At the same time, we have a problem of accountability. We have a private company, we have two levels of government, and it sits somewhere in between. So who’s accountable?”
Toronto mayor Olivia Chow also expressed her frustration with the new recycling collection program.
“We warned the government and Circular Materials that it’s not going to be an easy transition,” she said on Friday. “As you know, the provincial government took all recycling services away from the City of Toronto, so any recycling, the blue bins, is no longer run by the city – we absolutely have no control over it.”
Viewers who have reached out to CityNews over the past week say they don’t care who is responsible, they just want their recycling picked up.
“With the new company coming in just around the holidays, that’s exactly when we have so much waste, it was insane to deal with,” said one affected resident. “You would have thought that they would have been on the ball from the start, and they weren’t.”
“This garbage has been sitting here for days and days and days, and people live here, this is our home,” said another resident in the St. Clair and Bathurst area. “This should have been picked up a long time ago, so I don’t know what is going on. I don’t know why we changed what was happening with the garbage and recycling, but when you change something, it should be better, not worse, and this is clearly worse.”
In a statement provided to CityNews, Circular Materials says its teams are working around the clock to pick up all remaining recycling.
While Premier Doug Ford is preaching patience as the new program rolls out, he indicated earlier this week he would be willing to make further changes if the company’s service doesn’t improve.
