The city has finally implemented a three-item limit for garbage collection and some residents are losing their minds over it, and justifiably so.

First, let’s address the reason why the city is doing it with the support of our elected city councillors. According to the press release hailing the initiative, it’s all about encouraging residents to put more items in their recycle bins and not their garbage bags.

To the city’s credit, the press release also states that it will “help extend the life of the Trail Road Waste Facility Landfill site” as they “explore new options for waste disposal”. Bingo! The three-item program is being brought in to extend the life of the Trail Road landfill site because no city council wants to debate where they should create a new landfill site – not this city council, and not any city council dating back to when the city was amalgamated in 2001.

Of all the issues a city council must deal with, where to locate a landfill site is the absolute last thing on their list. It’s right below which library branch they should close and where to locate safe needle injection sites.

Of course, all of this could have been avoided if the city built a waste-to-energy conversion plant, also known as an incinerator. It had started to move in that direction when the council of the day sole-sourced a pilot project to Plasco Energy Group and its founder and former Ottawa Senators owner Rod Bryden in 2005.

The project ultimately came to an abrupt halt when Plasco filed for bankruptcy protection in 2015.

Looking back, the city failed its residents by not taking a broader look at various waste-to-energy models prior to giving Bryden the go ahead.

Waste-to-energy was being used around the world back then and even more so today. It’s relatively clean, efficient and effective in diverting waste from landfill and it’s being used in 35 countries around the world including such environmentally conscious places as Japan, Sweden Denmark and Barbados.

In Sweden, only one per cent of the country’s trash is sent to landfills. By burning trash, another 52% is converted into energy and the remaining 47% gets recycled. The amount of energy generated from waste alone provides heating to one million homes and electricity to 250,000.

If only that were the case in Canada, or just here in Ottawa. And, yes, building a waste-to-energy site would be costly, but they somehow found the money to build the LRT. (Editor’s note: In hindsight maybe some of that money would have been better spent on a waste-to-energy facility. Just sayin’.)

There are a number of companies out there who would be more than happy to work out an arrangement where by they build the facility and make their money back by disposing of waste not just from Ottawa but from neighbouring municipalities as well.

My grandfather once told me that good ideas never grow old. Shifting our waste management plan to include a waste-to-energy facility is one of those ideas. We just need a city council that can proactive rather than reactive.