OPINION: Nipawin and area has a garbage problem

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A recurring theme in the Town of Nipawin and the surrounding area is garbage, how to dispose of it properly and what residents expect of themselves when it comes to getting rid of their own waste.

In town, there are three streams of garbage flowing from your home that MTN or the Town take responsibility for disposing of on your behalf, household waste, recycling and compost.

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OPINION: Nipawin and area has a garbage problem Back to video

Waste has been around the longest and many people still think they should just throw everything in the garbage, haul it to the curb on pickup day and voila, problem solved.

Like everything else under the sun, waste disposal has changed. You no longer have a dump to haul stuff to; you don’t even have a landfill anymore. You have a Waste Diversion Centre.

What’s in a name? In this case, a whole heck of a lot. The name was changed to help people get the message that the days of free throwing everything you don’t want into the garbage are over.

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The days of it not costing you money are also over.

Every living person on this earth generates waste of some sort every day. You eat, you buy, you house yourself, clothe yourself and so on.

When stuff is leftover, it’s your individual responsibility to deal with your own remnants. The local municipality offers to haul it away for you and, in the members of BARWA’s case, have gone to great lengths to make it environmentally responsible and to save a lot of money for taxpayers.

Proper recycling can eliminate up to 50 per cent of what goes in the hole in the ground south of town. Why should you care? Because you are paying to maintain that hole properly, without leaving items like fridges, televisions or car batteries in the ground to poison it forever.

The fewer items that go in the hole saves every taxpayer and every generator of garbage money, lots of money, millions of dollars in money.

Throw your cardboard boxes and hard plastics in the blue recycling bin. Wash out the plastics first (like sour cream or margarine containers). A good rinse is enough, you don’t have to sanitize them completely.

Don’t put your used toilet paper in the recycling…or even in the garbage. It should be flushed down the toilet as it is intended to be. Don’t put dead animals in any of these containers. Waste meat can go in the garbage bin but plant items (grass clippings) can be composted.

You can buy large, very cheap compost bags at any local hardware store or even some grocery stores to put the compost in. The Town will no longer pick up plastic bags of compost because someone has to open every single bag.

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Absolutely do not ever put needles or other sharp items in the garbage or in the recycling or in the compost. Would you want to be poked by a random needle and have to worry about contracting Hepatitis or HIV from someone else? No one does.

The pharmacy will sell you a plastic container that the needle can’t go through. Failing that, reuse a hard plastic juice jug, margarine container or something impermeable to poking until you can take your needles to the pharmacy, which must accept them for proper disposal.

Do not throw your garbage out on the grid road because you can’t handle the thought of paying $20 or so to take it to the landfill/waste diversion centre.

It’s your garbage. You made it, you are responsible for disposing of it and like everything else in life, it is not free. You are also breaking the law when you throw it out on the road somewhere. Would you want someone else throwing their garbage on your property so you can deal with it? Probably not.

Get used to the idea of paying for garbage disposal. More and more municipalities are charging for this and the idea has already surfaced in Nipawin once or twice.

If you like the service you have now, respect it and take care of your own waste.