Olivia Chow wants to reclaim Toronto’s garbage bins
The city’s Astral contract is set to expire next year
You know when you’re strolling along a majestic Toronto street, coffee in hand, letting the morning sun beam upon your face, only for the vibe to be destroyed by the sight of one of those grey garbage receptacles overflowing with trash? There are many such cases. And Mayor Olivia Chow seems to understand.
According to the Toronto Star, Chow is planning to propose that the city reclaim the role of managing sidewalk garbage bins, pulling them back from nearly two decades of privatization. In a letter to Chow’s executive committee, obtained by the Star, Chow said the bins have had “issues regarding maintenance and installation.”
Related: Josh Matlow dreams of a Toronto without piles of hot garbage. Can it be done?
The contract with Astral, which launched in 2007 under former mayor David Miller, is set to expire next year. At that point, it’s Chow’s recommendation that the city “ensure our litter bins are well-designed, well-maintained, well-placed [and] responsive to community needs” by bringing the garbage receptacles under city management.
A spokesperson for Chow said the city doesn’t yet know how much it would cost to take over the approximately 10,500 bins placed throughout Toronto. But having sidewalks that aren’t piled with mounds of garbage because the bin is about to burst? Priceless.
Related: Olivia Chow is prepared to spend $6.2 million on Toronto’s pothole problem
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
