Random Access

Driving to work this morning, the unusual sight of a man pushing a shopping cart along the side of the road caught my eye.
He was not returning from a 24-hour grocery store with illegally-obtained transport. What was out of the ordinary was that the well-dressed man was collecting liquor bottles and other materials from blue boxes as he strolled along.
Can changes in public policy that offer financial incentives/rewards result in a significant changes in human behaviour?
Yes and no would seem to be the answer, judging from this little vignette. The scavenger was changing his behaviour, removing bottles from blue boxes so that he could return them to The Beer Store and get the deposit back.
So the incentive to return the bottles was working for somebody.
On the other hand, the 20-cent deposit obviously did not have an effect on the homeowners who were still putting their alcoholic empties in the blue box, rather than returning them as part of the LCBO deposit scheme.
If you think about your 3Rs, the people who pick things out of the garbage before the trucks come by are to be commended for their perspicacity. People forget that recycling is at the bottom of the 3R totem pole. The scavengers are often reusing rather than recycling.
Since a much-higher percentage of the glass returned to the LCBO will actually be reprocessed for new glass, the guy with his shopping cart was doing his bit too.
In talking to Dave Gordon of Peel Region about what can, and what cannot, go into the new green bins, the subject of contamination necessarily arose. It is critical that people do not put any kind of plastic in the bins, other than the recommended compostable material that will break down. Otherwise, the quality of the high-quality compost that is the end product will be affected.
Although people have been using the blue box for years, it is obvious from watching my neighbours and my co-workers, that many of them — how can we say this politely — haven’t got the full knack of it yet.
You would not believe how many people have never gotten the message that the caps should be removed from plastic bottles and the contents emptied.
The empty bottles crush more easily. Half-full bottles of pop can cause major problems with processing equipment. “It makes it difficult for things to be sorted properly,” says Gordon.
The material is sorted manually to remove as many contaminants as possible. If the right material is in the box in the first place, it not only improves the quality of the recycled goods but saves on labour costs.
Later this spring or summer, Peel will be launching a public education campaign to remind people about how to load their blue boxes, including a prompt to rinse out jars to remove as many food contaminants as possible and to put something heavy on the top so that the goods don’t blow all over the neighbourhood.
Some things, unfortunately, still can’t be accepted in either the organic or the blue box stream, such as takeout cups. Specifically Tim Horton coffee cups and the accompanying lids.
Not to worry. Get yourself a travel mug and take it in when you need a friend along the way. They’ll even give you a five-cent break on your coffee in most shops.