Weekly garbage pickup to be trashed in Orillia?

By NATHAN TAYLOR, Orillia Packet and Times
Orillia cannot go the way of Toronto in terms of how it manages its waste, Coun. Maurice McMillan said.
A member of the city’s waste management advisory committee (WMAC), McMillan said steps must be taken to reduce the amount of garbage going to the local landfill in order to prevent a trash crunch.
One positive step toward addressing the issue would be to have garbage collection every other week instead of every week, as it is now, he said.
If trash is collected every other week, but weekly pickup of compostable and recyclable materials is maintained, people might be less apt to toss those items in the garbage, McMillan said.
“The idea was to get as much stuff out of the flow to the dump as we could,” he said of WMAC’s discussions regarding the possible switch to biweekly pickup. “We’re giving (residents) an alternative. It makes them more responsible for their garbage. One time, everything went in the dump. This is a very responsible thing to do.”
At the current rate, there are still about 60 years left in the city’s current dump before it hits capacity, but that’s not as long as it might seem, he said.
Population growth is forecast for the city and, with a decision this year by Simcoe County council to scrap plans for a dump at Site 41 in Tiny Township, “any landfill now is years away from being developed,” he said.
It would be unfortunate, he said, if Orillia had to send its garbage out of town or, even worse, out of the country.
“There is something fundamentally wrong with that,” he said, adding “Toronto is in an embarrassing situation.”
McMillan would like to see a recommendation for biweekly trash collection to come before council early in the new year, but it’s unclear when or even if the recommendation will happen.
“I think it’ll become obvious that we should do this,” he said.