CALGARY — City hall is laying the groundwork to shift away from flat-rate garbage collection to a system where households can chose the size of their black cart based on need.

The plan won’t be revealed until later this spring, but early indications suggest the city intends to offer multiple sizes for black bins (and charged accordingly) and introduce a tag-a-bag system, where households are charged extra for waste that doesn’t fit in the container.

The city is considering rolling out a similar program for blue and green recycling and composting bins at a later date.

Rick Valdarchi, Calgary’s director of waste and recycling services, told the city’s utilities and corporate services committee Wednesday that the proposed system would help further reduce the amount of waste going to landfills.

“That is the goal at the end of the day,” Valdarchi told reporters. “We reduce our operating costs of a landfill ... we don’t consume space as fast, we extend the life of our landfills.”

City hall has set a lofty goal to divert waste entering landfills by 70 per cent by 2025, and, eventually, achieve zero waste where all discarded materials can be recycled, composted or repurposed.

Currently, single-family residential homeowners pay a flat monthly rate of $4.90 for waste collection.

Administration is expected to provide more details on the variable cart program and tag-a-bag system in a report to the committee in June. It’s unclear when the program would roll out, but it won’t happen this year.

“We need to come back sometime early 2019 with an implementation plan,” Valdarchi said.

“One thing we’re going to have to understand is what the pickup is going to be by the public based on the cart size,” he added. “So those are the sorts of details we’ve got to work out.”

The committee also approved a motion asking administration to explore options and unintended consequences of significantly reducing “avoidable” plastic waste and single-use items, such as plastic bags.

Coun. Druh Farrell’s motion stopped short of calling for a full ban on plastic bags, which may disappoint the hundreds who have signed a petition demanding a ban.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“A ban, if there are no viable options, often doesn’t work,” said Farrell.

“We’re seeing more and more information about the damage that single-use plastics are wreaking in our environment and we need to do something.”

Read more about: