Green Daily

The mayor of Sarnia, a city on the Canadian side of the US/Canada border, has chastised Toronto for sending a "cavalcade" of garbage trucks down Canadian highways on their way to distant landfills.

The comments came after a garbage truck driver was killed in an accident while hauling waste from Toronto to Michigan. However, the issue has been ongoing for some years, with 4 million residents of the Greater Toronto Area finding it harder and harder to get someone to accept our trash. For the last few years, more than a hundred truckloads of garbage each day have been convoyed to sites in Michigan, but that state has decided there are better ways to make a buck than selling space for trash, and will end the agreement as of 2010. Toronto has since bought a landfill near St. Thomas, Ontario, but local residents are already complaining about increased traffic, risk, and the general unpleasantness of having tons of decaying waste in their backyard.

Because the only thing more eco-nasty than throwing crap into a landfill is shipping it hundreds of miles in diesel trucks to do that, the answer will be diversion. Toronto Mayor David Miller points out that Toronto has reduced shipments in recent years, and is well on its way to achieving its goal of 70% diversion by 2010, thanks to "green bin" organic waste composting and enhanced blue box recycling programs.