Recycling plans trashed

THE EDITOR: What’s the point of trumpeting new initiatives for recycling when you’re unable to even get it started?

The PoS city council a few weeks ago started advertising a new recycling project in Woodbrook for a weekly Wednesday pick-up. We were instructed in large newspaper ads to separate our recyclables (aluminum cans, plastic and glass bottles, and cardboard containers) and place them in clear garbage bags for their trucks to collect. I was pleased with this initiative having practised it in developed countries all the time. I got the whole family involved and even had my grand-baby dutifully following all instructions and washing out her juice containers and storing them in the clear bags for collection.

As instructed, we placed the bags on the curb (separate from the regular garbage) in clear bags, fully confident that our efforts would be the start of something new and wonderful for our community.

At 4 pm the bags were still at the curb and along the street where other civic-minded residents had also placed their recyclables, night came, still there. Next morning the bags still had not been touched and, we watched in horror as all our efforts went up in smoke when the regular garbage truck came along on Thursday morning and dumped all the carefully selected and sorted recyclables with the regular trash.

I asked myself, what was the point of the city council starting a project, spending thousands on colour newspapers ads, etc when they should have known they were not ready to implement, dooming the endeavour to failure before it even started?

As the old adage goes, “That’s why we can never have nice things.”

H Thomas Amin, Woodbrook