For London, like Kermit the Frog, it’s never been easy being green.

But it could get much tougher, with new estimates showing the costs of starting a city green-bin recycling program for organic waste are running millions of dollars higher than expected.

A just-released “business case” for bringing in green bins, including containers for every household to divert all food waste and used diapers, shows launching such a program would cost $12 million.

Annual operating costs would add another $4.5 million — the equivalent of a nearly one-per-cent increase in property taxes, according to a budget report prepared at council’s request.

The latest cost estimates blow away already-challenging forecasts, from three years ago, of a $9-million startup and $3-million annual operating tab, making a tough sell even tougher for Coun. Stephen Turner, council’s green-bin promoter.

“This isn’t an easy fight by any means,” he said. “I was disappointed because it might shake some people in their commitment to this. This is something London has been talking about for 20 years.”

Equipped with a giant landfill, London was one of Ontario’s last big cities to adopt blue-box curbside recycling more than 25 years ago. It remains one of Canada’s last large holdouts on green-bin recycling.

Despite the jacked-up cost estimates, Turner is sticking to his guns that the Forest City will have to bite the bullet sooner or later, so better sooner.

“This is the multi-million-dollar budget bomb,” he said. “We just kick it down the road if we don’t do it now.”

But Coun. Maureen Cassidy said she’d rather take the advice of city environment director Jay Stanford, who is studying waste-diversion programs in other big cities that could actually go farther than green bins.

“If it turns out to be better technology, better for the environment and more cost-effective, why are we going to spend millions with old technology, when we can wait just a little bit and do something with new technology? Cassidy asked.

Stanford said Sunday his team will follow council’s direction.

But Stanford’s preference is to keep researching what else is out there.

“If they say do it, we can do it. But professionally, I think waiting a little bit longer, there’s no harm in that,” he said. “The green-bin program works, we know that. But for the money you spend on it, I want to be able to say with confidence that it’s the best possible technology.”

London’s last green-bin cost estimates came in late 2013 based on 2012 costs in other cities and a London pilot project dating a year earlier, meaning they’re up to four years out of date, the report suggests.

Stanford noted cities including Halifax and Edmonton have high levels of waste diversion, using different approaches than the green bin.

Cassidy said some Londoners don’t believe the city should pay for what’s essentially green-bin composting, something many have done in their own backyards for decades.

There are differences, however. While food scraps such as meat and cheese can’t be composted at home, plates can be completely scraped into green bins. Disposable diapers also are accepted.

More than half of council supported getting a green-bin business plan drawn up, but it’s not clear how they’ll react to the new cost estimates. One politician among the few who voted against a plan said he’s keeping an open mind, but wants to hear what the public thinks at a Wednesday budget input session.

“There’s a large cost to this and there’s a large opportunity cost to other things we could do with this money,” said Coun. Josh Morgan, adding he’s not sold on Turner’s better-now-than-later pitch.

“Whether it’s this or rapid transit, by the time you get to implementing something, sometimes there’s new technology (to reduce the cost),” said Morgan.

Turner points out that while the $4.5-million annual operating cost alone would hike property taxes by nearly one per cent, that doesn’t account for savings in garbage collection with organic waste that would be siphoned off.

“If you were doing organic waste weekly, you’d be doing the remainder of garbage every other week. And we could go to a fixed-day garbage collection,” he said.

As for the start-up bill for equipment, Turner says there are ways to pay that without directly affecting property tax bills. He said the $12 million “ends up not having an impact” on taxpayers, because it could be taken from other sources such as gasoline-tax transfers to the city by senior governments rather than from property taxes.

Another way to cushion the financial fallout is to start the program halfway through 2018, so the start-up costs are spread over two years, he said.

Council is in the midst of multi-year budget talks, with the average annual tax hike for the next four years, 2016 to 2019, now at 2.3 per cent.

London ran a green-bin pilot program for 15 months starting in late 2011, serving 760 homes in the Glen Cairn area and achieving 50- to 60-per-cent participation.

In the report, staff warn there are risks with postponing green bins yet again, starting with getting provincial approval for an expanded landfill if the city can’t show it’s doing all it can to divert waste. London’s waste-diversion rate from landfill is 45 per cent, short of Ontario’s 60-per-cent target for communities.

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GREEN BIN

PROS AND CONS

From the city’s business plan:

Advantages: Reduces greenhouse gases; would bring London closer to Ontario’s target of 60-per-cent waste diversion from landfills; would extend life of city’s landfill and make use of materials now wasted; job creation; would help avoid increases in long-term disposal costs.

Disadvantages:High cost; lower participation rates than blue-box programs; possible processing problems; yuk factor from odour, maggots and flies; lack of funding.