London is a vibrant and beautiful city. It has some of the country’s best higher-learning institutions, loads of greenery and lush parks and it’s well known as a test market for new products and new ideas. If you can make it work in London, it will work everywhere else.
It also has a seedy downtown district and an alarming number of one-on-one robberies, some say because of a gaggle of young folks with crystal meth addictions. It has some squeegee people whom I’d truly love to give a loonie or two except that I don’t want to encourage them to hang out at traffic lights and wander between cars. I don’t want to help make it profitable.
One thing this city doesn’t have is a green bin program. Most sophisticated urban centres have had one for quite some time. In Toronto, we could even put dog waste into our green bins. I actually phoned the city to make sure I hadn’t misread the guide on that one! But here, we’re still putting peelings and other organic matter into the landfills.
Three councillors have voted against implementing a green bin plan which is moving forward but still isn’t a sure thing. I’m going to make a point of following up on what the reasoning is behind the trio of “nay” votes. It will cost a little to get going and residents will need to be educated, but so what? It’s the right thing to do. And isn’t doing the right thing part of what makes a city attractive to live, work and play in?