No apartment green bins yet

The city’s announcement that apartment-dwellers across the city are likely to wait a little while longer for green bins has landlords seeing red.

In Nov. 2008, the city started to roll out organic waste collection in 510,000 apartment units. The plan was to add 300 buildings each month until all 4,500 complexes were on board by the end of 2010.

But the plan could be delayed by a year, said Geoff Rathbone, the city’s general manager for solid waste, citing the wait for the city to construct a second organic waste processing facility at the Disco Transfer Station and concerns about the upcoming budget.

But delaying this system is unfair to landlords and tenants who pay based on volume of trash, said Brad Butt, president of the Greater Toronto Apartment Association.

While recycling, organics, large bulk items are collected for free, garbage is charged based on weight. So the more landlords and their tenants can reduce waste, the less it will cost them.

“All kitchen waste is going into the garbage waste with a garbage levy, Butt said. “That’s blatantly unfair.”

Delaying the green bin in apartments also puts a kink in the city’s target of 70 percent overall diversion of waste from landfill by the end of 2010.

By the end of 2010, single-family homes will be diverting between 65-70 percent of waste from landfill by the end next year. For multi-unit residences the diversion rate is projected to 22 percent.

The combined diversion rate for all residents will be 50 percent next year.

“It was always a very ambitious goal,” Rathbone said. “But Toronto’s diversion rate is near the very top of North American cities.”