Dear editor,
Why I am voting against the rural garbage and recycling pickup scheme?
1) There is no incentive to reduce waste. Households will get one can every week, all year long, so we might as well fill it. I buy very few goods with packaging, hardly any cans and jars, and I compost, and I use newspapers and magazines for garden and pathway mulch.
2) It seems very harmful ecologically to run a garbage truck up every rural road in the regional district every week. Now only those people who want pickup pay for it, and they have the option of less-frequent service, and of stopping it all together when they are away.
3) Giving all our waste pickup to a single (the largest BFI) company reduces options (diversity) and competition.
So the bill would be only $150 per year per household? That's a lot if you do only three or four dump runs per year like me. And what happens in three years when the other smaller garbage companies are gone?
4) Rural homeowners will still have to make occasional dump runs for those items that don't fit into an 80-litre garbage can. That old mouldy carpeting, the twisted wire fence you finally replaced, etc.
5) I don't need the arguably administration-heavy regional district taking on another service. I can look after my own garbage, thank you very much.
Every vote counts in this case. It will be decided by a simple majority, whether the turnout is 500 or 5,000 of the estimated 15,000 eligible voters. Please vote on Nov. 16 or at advance polls.
Susan Holvenstot,
Dove Creek (Area C)