The Editor,
I just received a 14-page booklet from the city of Port Coquitlam explaining what to do with household garbage.
It says that what we throw away is closely monitored. And if we don’t obey all the rules and get properly educated, pick-up could be suspended.
The booklet does not say who is monitoring us or what you are to do with your garbage if the city refuses to pick it up. Maybe spread it on the front lawn to help the nematodes finish off the chafer beetles? Once again, city hall is punching blindly from its brown paper bag of recycling lunacy.
The booklet is as confusing as a physics course. It’s a bit silly, too, as one of the graphics has a dog doing its business but no picture of the business itself. So at first glance, it looks like you can throw your dog in the bin.
Some stuff you can throw in the bin. But not the grocery bags they put your stuff in at Safeway and Save-On. And other stuff you have to drive all over the place to dump it. depending on what it is — which takes time, puts more cars on the road and CO2 in the atmosphere.
Why not have an accessible, one-stop recycling facility in PoCo where you can take all the stuff that shouldn’t go in the bins and the stuff you are not sure about?
Or charge us enough to cover the costs of sorting all the garbage so that we can throw all of our stuff in the bins and be done with it?
Either way would eliminate the confusion, monitoring, threatening people with suspension, and the driving-all-over business. How much more would it cost?
Isn’t that why we got the three bins in the first place?
Peter Manning,
Port Coquitlam
