WATCH ABOVE: Mark Carcasole reports that GFL has “removed” one collector from his truck after the video surfaced.
TORONTO – A garbage collector filmed leaving garbage on the side of the curb has been removed from the route, a Green For Life spokesperson said Friday.
A video of the incident near Eglinton Avenue and Lawrence Avenue was uploaded to YouTube Thursday and shows a worker hopping off the back of the truck, walking to the bins and dumping what’s in the green bin into the much larger blue bin to its right. He then leaves, without taking anything.
A Green For Life spokesperson told Global News Friday that “the collector in the video breached our policies and we’ve removed him from the truck.”
So why did it happen?
WATCH: The video showing a garbage collector combining the contents of the bin before leaving.
“We’ve posed that question back to our contractor, we’ve asked them to address that,” Robert Orpin, the director of collection operations with the city of Toronto said.
“That contractor in turn has come back to us and said they’ll take the appropriate action against this particular employee.”
But it’s not the first time this has happened.
Greg Silverman lives near the Annex and got a call from his wife Thursday afternoon saying their garbage bins had disappeared. He looked on his phone, which has an app broadcasting their security camera and saw a Green For Life worker taking his garbage bin down the street and leaving it there.
“I saw one of the GFL workers taking our green bin and then our neighbour’s green bin, dumping them into our garbage bin, and then dragging them down the street to dump in the truck and just leaving it sort of two houses down.”
He called 311 and his local councillor’s office and 311 is investigating.
There have also been at least two other instances of GFL workers pilfering garbage bins in the last few years.
“It’s upsetting,” Silverman said.
“We’ve done a number of things in our house to be green, to reduce water use and to reduce waste and we’re always worried that we’re going to get our recycling rejected because we’ve thrown things that are illegal into the green bin or things that can’t go there and I guess it doesn’t really matter.”
City workers and contracted employees pick up garbage from roughly 500,000 homes each week. And while this might be an isolated incident, Orpin said it’s still a serious concern.
“This is one location in a half a million in a week, but it’s one too many,” he said.
– With files from Mark Carcasole
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