Recycling bins lie strewn across the street all over the west side of Lethbridge.
And the blue bins are the most likely of the three types of bins to be blown over when the wind howls, according to James Nicholls, the city’s waste and environment collections manager.
“The material that’s being placed in the cart is obviously the biggest culprit,” Nicholls said. “It’s lightweight papers, plastic, and so just that lack of weight on the blue cart is actually one of the main culprits for it tipping over.”
Even full of materials, many of the bins fall. Some residents have to pick up their fallen receptacles multiple times per week.
“Pretty constant when it’s this windy down here,” resident Greg Shulte said. “Sometimes three, four times per week, picking it up with cardboard and plastic.”
Nicholls said the lid “really acts like a sail.”
“When that cart isn’t closed properly, it can sit there and bang up and down and then it will destabilize the cart and sometimes knock that cart over.”
With limited options to resolve the situation of the downed bins, residents take matters into their own hands and do what they deem responsible.
“Our own garbage bin tumbles. We do pick it up and just put the trash back into it. Easy enough,” local Craig Pienkowski said.
For some, yes, but it’s not easy for everyone, especially older people. But there is hope.
“We’ve been looking into various tools that can be used, can be implemented, on the blue cart,” Nicholls said, “in order to ensure that cart — especially pre-collection when it still has material in it — does not get knocked over or gets knocked over less often.”
A pilot project being tested with about 5,000 homes in the city aims to solve this problem — a latching system that keeps the lids closed.
“It acts as sort of a prevention,” Nicholls said, “of that lid popping up.”
There are other things residents can do that can help reduce the chance of your bins overturning.
“Keeping the right materials in the cart, keeping the lid closed, not overfilling the cart and then off-setting it slightly are definitely helpful,” Nicholls said. “The bins don’t have to be perfectly perpendicular to the road, they can be turned about 30 to 45 degrees and that can help too.”
Finally, you can minimize the amount of time your bin spends out in the open at the curb.
“If your cart is empty, whether it be black, blue or green and there’s no weight in it, the chances of it getting blown away on a windy day are just as likely across the three streams,” Nicholls said. “There’s only so much we can do against gale-force winds.”
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