Recycling Update

Up in North York, we are the last neighborhood still waiting to come online with the Green Bin program in September. There will be lots of info on this exciting form of waste diversion at our next environment day and in the summer months leading up to the strat date. Our Environment Day up at the McNicholl Transfer Station is on June 11th. Come with containers and pick up some free composted soil.

In the meantime, new items for the Blue Box:

News Release April 1, 2005

Blue Box program expands...
Plastic jars, tubs and lids are now in. Effective today, April 1, residents can now kick their recycling efforts up a notch by including all plastic food jars, tubs and lids in their blue boxes.
Items include plastic peanut butter jars, margarine, cottage cheese and yogurt tubs and plastic ice cream containers and lids, to name a few.

"Expanding the Blue Box program is an important step toward our goal of diverting 60 per cent of Toronto’s waste from landfill by the year 2006," said Angelos Bacopoulos, general manager of Toronto’s Solid Waste Management Services. "It’s also key to developing a ‘made-in-Toronto’ solution for managing the City’s waste."

The addition of the new recyclables is expected to divert some 2,000 tonnes of plastic annually from single-family and multi-family residences. That means 58 fewer garbage trailer trucks are headed to landfill each year.

Recent market developments show that a viable market for plastic food jars, tubs and lids is evolving. These plastics will be recycled into a variety of products such as pallets, irrigation pipes, trashcans, plastic lumber, flower pots and even items for automotive applications.
The Blue Box program was last expanded in 2001 with the addition of milk cartons, juice boxes, empty paint cans and empty aerosol cans.