Disposal problem

I was wondering if anyone has any ideas. I just moved to a new house and I live with my parents. I was thinking everything would work out the way it used to but I was wrong.

Where I once lived before there was garbage and recycling pick up weekly and we had a big garbage can so this was never an issue. I was shocked to find out when I moved that the amount of garbage they will pick up is far less then I am use to and only every other week as far as garbage is concerned, but recycling is weekly. The big garbage can was left at the old house.

As far as transportation is concerned I don't have a car to take the garbage to the transfer station myself to get rid of my DL habit. I use transit (bus and SkyTrain) in Vancouver.

I live close to the beach and there are public garbage cans around, but I'd rather not dispose my habit slowly that way because of the risks of being fined for throwing personal trash away.

If anyone has any ideas or advice in this situation I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks.

Wow, your garbage/recycle pickup schedule sounds incredibly stupid. Garbage stinks (especially if there are diapers!) and recycle does not. We have just the opposite here - garbage weekly, recycle bi-weekly. How about exterior garbage cans at convenience stores?

Many cities have tiered collection now. Here, we pay rate 1. 2, or 3 depending on how big of a garbage can we want. The city uses those automated trucks that just have a driver that stops at your can and a mechanical arm picks it up and dumps it. We also can sign up for yard waste collection, which gets us a different large can for grass etc. On top of that, we can sign up for "extra pickup" which gives us some additional pickup weeks for yard waste as well as using the yard waste can once a month for comingled recycleables. (they take everything except glass and plastic bags, I use it for steel cans, plastic containers, paper, and cardboard mostly)

So you get whatever services you want to pay for. I personally just go with a small garbage can, but I go all in on the yard waste and recycle. And yes, wet diapers DO add a surprising amount of weight to your garbage can. Just 7 overnight diapers at around 3 lbs apeiece, that's an extra 21 lbs right there. Families get the medium or the large garbage cans usually.

Kenn said:

Wow, your garbage/recycle pickup schedule sounds incredibly stupid. Garbage stinks (especially if there are diapers!) and recycle does not. We have just the opposite here - garbage weekly, recycle bi-weekly. How about exterior garbage cans at convenience stores?

Click to expand...

Mine here in uk is rubbish one week recycling the next and some councils are doing rubbish 3 or even monthly

In a backpack out the front door, and then in a garbage when you find one you can use. That's what I did in college.

parcelboy2 said:

Mine here in uk is rubbish one week recycling the next and some councils are doing rubbish 3 or even monthly

Click to expand...

we're on the three-weekly rotation and the only real difference it makes is the hassle. not really worth the hassle in the context of the EU fine/scam and nobody having any say as to whether or not the stuff gets recycled once it's left our shores (or even our local area); and by all accounts, a lot if not most, doesn't: it just gets dumped in foreign landfills (except where the plastic-bottles-into-clothing scam exists; y'all can review that at your leisure and taxation).
our food waste is taken weekly, this on the premiss that, along with garden waste, it's gets turned into compost [for gardens]. strangely, though, i've never seen this 'council compost' for sale (not to mention that only the idle rich buy compost. working-class folk have no use for it). another oddity is that dog muck goes in the landfill bin, not the compost bin; ask them why, pointing out that shit is already partly-cum-mostly composted food waste, and they don't know why.

and before anybody leaps to the defence of the scammers/councils/governments involved, six months-or-more ago i reported some asbestos waste dumped in a layby, near to some new houses [for the rich (aka, outsiders/foreigners), as per usual] and it's still there. a couple of bags were removed, but all the loose stuff is still there; obviously, a licenced asbestos removal firm wasn't involved. and you can also bet that whomever removed what they did, wasn't told what they were handling; and by that, their families and children will now have been exposed.

diaper-wise, the introduction of waste collection rotation has coincided with the general decline in the form and function of disposable diapers and i now use fewer, wearing trad nappies more. if i happen to use dispies some weeks before their collection, i tend to place them, individually, in swing-bin liners (as they don't have air-holes) and they can be placed in our bin as suits me; often, i put them in whichever kitchen-waste (mostly packaging) bag is partly used and bin it immediately, or i'll place it beneath other bags already in the bin. the latter can also be done with other household's bins.
we've also had to start using a dedicated bin for the dog muck (stainless-steel, for rust resistance and to reflect the sun's heat; and weather-proofish, although the wind disagrees) and i sometimes dump my dispies in there.
a trick which i've not done for a while is to wheely the bin about the neighbourhood as the bin-wagon does it's tour of duty. i've had three bin-loads emptied that way.