Beaconsfield is thinking about tossing out tradition and going with a high-tech trash collection system that could see residents pay based on the amount of refuse they haul to the curb.
The West Island municipality has set up an organic depot centre but residents still toss out 7,200 tonnes of garbage per year, one of the highest per-capita totals on the island.
Beaconsfield has completed a two-year pilot project which saw bins tagged with a chip that measures the weight of garbage.
The amount of garbage taken from those bins was 33 percent lower than those without the chip-encased bins.
Project participant Roger Nader said that the chip increased awareness. “You get into the project and you are more conscious of what you recycle and what you don't. how you dispose of your waste,” he told CTV Montreal.
Beaconsfield Mayor George Bourelle notes that the province is planning to penalize towns that don’t reduce their waste by 2020 and so the project will continue and likely expand, possibly to a point where people will have to pay more to toss out more.
“That's one aspect what we're looking at, of course that would be an incentive for our residents to reduce their waste because they would have to pay as you go or in this case as you throw. And that would be an incentive for the city to reduce costs and residents to reduce costs,” he said.
