Green Bins Have Arrived

It’s been nearly a year since we first reported that the City of Kingston was finally embracing a Green Bin recycling program. These environmentally friendly vessels will receive our table scraps, soiled paper, and yard waste, and could help reduce household garbage by as much as 65 percent. Throughout the past week or so, I’ve noticed freshly distributed Green Bins lining the doorsteps on my way home, but each time I arrived at my residence, I was disappointed to find that ours had not yet been delivered. Rewind to Monday evening, where we finally received our shiny new Green Bin. Check out pictures of the full un-boxing on our Flickr.

Inside our Green Bin, was a smaller white container, accompanied with various educational and promotional materials. This included two Kitchen Container liners, a Green Bin Guide, a Trim Your Waste Guide, an easy-reference “what goes in your Green Bin” sticker, and a fridge magnet. I took the time to go through all the guides, and I found that some of the content was rather repetitive, and ultimately obvious. One such example described – via illustrations and text – how to place your full kitchen bags, into your paper bag-lined Green Bin. This pamphlet and the “paper bag within a paper bag” system are huge wastes of paper! Then again, perhaps some Kingstonians will benefit from this level of detail.

This past weekend we visited good friends of ours in Wasaga Beach, who also have an organic waste collection program in place. Save for being amazed with the amount of waste they don’t have, I was also taken with their fridge magnet that clearly outlines what goes in the Green, Blue and Grey Bins. As mentioned above, this easy reference guide was also provided to us, however it came in the form of a sticker. Personally, I can’t see us sticking it to our fridge, or any other spot in our kitchen that is out in the open. Further, the magnet we received is rather pointless as it offers nothing more than the City’s catch-all telephone number.

Minor as they may be, I think those points are worth consideration when the City looks at printing and ordering new materials to be included with Green Bins in the future. Since the Queen’s Ghetto isn’t scheduled to receive their Green Bins until September 2009, perhaps they could benefit from a fridge magnet and less paper? On that note, although the delayed delivery of the bins to Queen’s could be viewed as short sighted, I think it will save the City from having to re-issue Green Bins to students who burn theirs in the street at the end of the current semester.

Over the past year, we’ve been recycling as much of our organic waste as possible in our backyard composter, and that’s made a huge impact. In the two days we’ve employed our Green Bin, we’ve already diverted our unclaimed table scraps, those hairballs my wife and cat blame on one another, as well as a paper bag from microwave popcorn. Considering the long list of other items that are suitable for our Green Bin, I can’t wait to see what our curbside contribution will look like in a year from now.

Have you received and started to use your Green Bin yet?  What do you think about this new recycling tool?