My wife and I live in a house; just the two of us. We don’t have kids, and we don’t have a secondary suite. On “garbage day”, we put out one or two garbage cans and a blue box.
This is in striking contrast to the vast number of our neighbours who have one or more secondary suites, and line up long rows of garbage and recycling containers for collection. Ordinarily, I’m quite content to take a “live and let live” approach to this, and I try not to think too much about the issue of people who aren’t paying property taxes realizing the benefits of city services.
However, on Sunday, my wife hosted a baby shower for a friend; a very well attended event that created more than our usual quantity of garbage.
Last night, I found that I couldn’t get the last two bags into our two garbage containers.
With visions in my head of the mounds of garbage regularly collected from my neighbours, I set the two “extra” bags on top of the garbage cans. This morning I found that the collection folks had tossed the bags on top aside, and only taken the bags that were in the containers.
I’d imagine there are rules about the collection of garbage that’s not in a container? Likewise, there are rules about multiple families living in single-family dwellings. I am disappointed beyond words that the City of Surrey has seemingly abdicated its responsibility to enforce the latter, while its contract garbage collector is so zealously enforcing the former.
Please, can’t we employ just a little common sense?
Jason White
