Housebound people generate more garbage
So many people are home from work, getting to grips with their domestic situation, that they’ve been generating much more garbage than usual for the city to grapple with.
The map in this piece shows the tendency isn’t evenly distributed around town. This time of year we’d likely see more trash coming from boroughs with a lot of rental properties as people prepare for moving day, but this year it seems like it’s wealthier areas that are doing the sorting.
Also, on thinking about it: won’t some of this garbage be displaced from downtown onto more residential areas? People who can work from home are largely white collar workers, hence the displacement of daytime garbage from office-dense areas to more affluent neighbourhoods.
In any case, the city seems to have resolved its recycling problems with a new contract.
Mark Côté 11:46 on 2020-06-14 Permalink
Garbage is probably handled very differently in a large office building downtown than from individual households. I’m not even sure if it is the city that is fully responsible for office garbage, but even if it is, picking up a tonne of garbage from one place requires a different system from the same amount of garbage distributed over hundreds of households (and even if the volume is roughly the same it’s probably not the same type of garbage).
CE 14:58 on 2020-06-14 Permalink
Since my girlfriend started working from home and I’m in the house much of the day, our garbage output has more than doubled. We used to produce one of those small white garbage bags every two weeks, now it’s at least one a week. For recycling, normally we could go three weeks between changing recycling bags. It’s usually one every two weeks now.
Blork 16:09 on 2020-06-14 Permalink
But isn’t that offset by the lack of garbage being produced downtown and at malls? It’s not like people are eating or consuming more, they’re just doing it at home, minus the disposable dishes. So you’d think overall there would be less garbage.
BTW, have you ever walked down Ste-Catherine st. on garbage day (pre-covid)? It’s ridiculous. Boxes and bags heaped one or two metres high, block after block. There are stretches where you can barely get from the street to the sidewalk because of all the piled up garbage waiting to be picked up.
CE 17:18 on 2020-06-14 Permalink
I’m sure all the takeout packaging has been creating more garbage. Other than pizza, I almost never got takeout or delivery food. Now, whenever I want to eat at a restaurant, there’s not much choice but to produce a bunch of garbage that wouldn’t have been necessary when eating in was possible.