Dear Editor: This is an example of the financial waste which I’ve found that’s going on in the collection of our city’s waste. Burnaby’s sanitation department has a rule that states that your bins must be placed one metre apart in order for the arms of the garbage truck to fit between them and raise the bins. I’ve always tried to comply with this rule although I sometimes wonder if a cost versus benefit analysis was done between this system and the old manual lift garbage collection system before the change was made.
Being only human, though, I placed my bins a little too close together last week, and my garbage wasn’t picked up. However, the driver took the time to get out of his truck to place a meaningless sticker on one of my bins with a diagram on it showing the correct spacing of the bins. In other words, he took the time to do that but wouldn’t move one of the bins over a little to do his job of picking up the garbage.
That’s because, as I later learned, the city thinks it’s also the driver’s job to teach us a lesson if we violate the rules. Then we all pay for this stupid policy when I phoned the sanitation department to report that my garbage wasn’t picked up. The reason was explained to me, of course, and I was asked if I still wanted my garbage picked up. I explained that I thought this was one of the services we’re paying taxes for and was told that my garbage would be picked up the next day.
Yes, they made a special trip, actually two special trips just for me, once for my regular garbage and another truck for my garden waste, two days later. And each truck was the old style in which the driver gets out and manually lifts the bin into the rear. I wonder if he gets extra pay for doing all that heavy lifting as they did in the good old days. And can you imagine what it cost you, the taxpayer, for this extra service, all because a driver couldn’t move my bin over a few inches or centimetres?
Jim Ervin, Burnaby
