How heavy is your garbage?

[SIZE="3"]Councillors will be asked to consider putting a weight limit on individual bags of garbage collected from homes.

The city's public safety and environment committee accepted a recommendation from the city's public safety and engineering division to draft bylaw changes to control the weight of bags placed for pickup.

Engineer Mark Hymers told the committee that Halifax, Moncton and Saint John place a weight limit of [B][COLOR="Red"]20-25 kilograms [/COLOR][/B]per bag on any mixed waste garbage. That's between [B][COLOR="red"]44-50 pounds [/COLOR][/B]per bag.

But deputy mayor Tony Whalen said the city should proceed cautiously on the concept of imposing a per bag weight limit because it may be too tough to enforce.

"How will you know how much it weighs?" Whalen said. "How will we enforce it?"

The average homeowner isn't likely to put a garbage bag on a scale and Whalen said putting a bylaw on the books that can't be enforced isn't useful.

"We need to iron out that first," he told the public safety committee session Tuesday.

Homeowners who rent or buy Trius garbage dollies or similar ones more than likely exceed the proposed weight limit.

Hymers said the issue came up because Trius Disposal Systems Inc., which collects the city's garbage and recycling items, has been working with WorkSafe NB to reduce muscle-related injuries.

The public safety and environment committee has also directed city staff to prepare a business case on whether to expand or change the way items are collected for recycling.

Fredericton has a blue box-grey curbside collection program for residential property owners.

The city doesn't provide a door-to-door service for apartment building and condominium owners.

Those residents can access recycling depots at the Fredericton Exhibition Grounds, near the Canadian Tire on Smythe Street, Two Nations Wal-Mart and Brookside Mall.

Residents in the Regent and Beaverbrook streets area as well as Hanwell Road and Bishop Drive are appealing for a recycling depot closer to them.

Hymers said a Regent Street site location for a fifth collection box is on the radar for 2010 to serve the east side of the city, including the university area.

Hymers said the city is trying to work with its contractor to try to tidy up the depot sites that tend to become messy, attracting complaints from the property owners who provide the host sites as a goodwill gesture.

"The public complains that the boxes are too full and not emptied often enough, which leads to frustrated customers and overflow material on the ground," Hymers told the committee meeting Tuesday.

The contractor is trying to empty boxes Friday regardless of whether they're full so that there's room for deposits of paper, plastic and cardboard over the weekend.

"Some users bring large bags stuffed with recyclables, and since the bags won't fit through the narrow slots, rather than empty them manually, they leave them on the ground," Hymers said.

The city also has concerns that commercial businesses and building contractors are trying to cut their costs of private collection and disposal by stuffing cardboard boxes and other items in the collection bins intended for residential users only, he said.[/SIZE]