Barrie City Hall to provide three garbage tags per household as more people work from home
Tags will be mailed to residents who request them
The City of Barrie may be providing three free garbage tags to households as folks are spending more time at home.
“We recognize there are more people at home, we recognize this could possibly increase the amount of garbage,” said Barrie CAO Michael Prowse, “We want to make sure we can maintain those services, and as part of that, ensuring we don’t have an influx of garbage at the curbside, which is going to put a strain on our service,”
This plan does include the potential for an influx in garbage to the city’s landfill, something Deputy Mayor Barry Ward was hoping to avoid. “There may be exceptions, but I think everybody should take this opportunity to actually learn a bit about recycling and composting and reduce their amount of garbage,” said Deputy Mayor Ward. “There should be no excuse for this, for people having more garbage. Thousands of Barrie residents work out of their homes all the time, and have figured out how to do it,”
Councillor Sergio Morales agrees but says he has to face reality. “The volume is up. I think that I want us to have an opportunity for people to embrace and are forced to use recycling and diversion into green bins,” he said during Monday’s meeting, “the reality is, they don’t,”
Residents who require garbage tags can email garbagetags@barrie.ca or call Service Barrie at 705-726-4242 and provide their name and address. Tags will be mailed out. Three garbage tags per residential address can be requested. The City asks that only one additional bag (with a tag) be used per collection week. The deadline for tag requests is June 30, 2020 and residents may only make a request once during this time period.