From the sounds of it the system is very poorly thought out ...
While I think that the cost of my local system is ridiculous (twice what profitable private companies were charging for the same service) the City of Calgary’s program is actually reasonable for most people. Right now people have been given a (gigantic) blue bin for recyclables and (regardless of whether it is metal, glass or paper based) all recyclables go into that bin to be sorted by the city; trash is still picked up as it was before but will (in the not too distant future) be switched over to everyone being given a gigantic black bin to put all of your garbage in; and down the road there are plans to give everyone a gigantic green bin for compost.
The city’s reasoning behind this program was that they wanted a high level of compliance from people, and having unreasonable requirements put on citizens was only going to result in people not sorting their trash.
