Green bin service requests have increased by almost 40 per cent so far this year in Gloucester-South Nepean, analysis of Ottawa’s 3-1-1 data shows. Experts and city says the trend is an indication of a rise in public composting due to plastic bags and the COVID-19 pandemic.

These requests for service can range from replacing green bins, calls for cleanup, to an increased number of households needing bins, according to Shelley McDonald, acting Director of Solid Waste Service for the City of Ottawa.

In June 2019 the City of Ottawa permitted the use of plastic bags to dispose of their organics to increase the public’s composting. This came shortly after a market research survey carried out by Hill and Knowlton Strategies, found that 60 per cent of people said they would compost if they could use plastic bags.

 

An infographic showing the key information about the 3-1-1 service requests from 2019-2020 in Gloucester-South Nepean ward. Created by Max Bakony. 

 

The increase in the ward’s green bin service requests comes from growing community diversity, according to 30-year-old David Brown, executive assistant for the ward’s city councilor Carole Anne Meehan, who was unavailable for interview.

“We’re seeing a lot of younger people moving in, particularly with families,” says Brown, a long-time resident of the area. “Our generation has that established mindset of ‘we must do more to help reduce climate change.’”

Organics waste experts agree that there have been strong indicators that more are composting in Ottawa.

Michael Leopold, the CEO of Convertus Group which composts the city’s organics waste, says they found a 20 per cent increase in their volume of organic waste this winter.

Tim Middleton, operations manager for Convertus’ Ottawa facility says that their peak volumes are normally in the spring and fall. “But we were at peak levels (of organics and leaf and yard waste) from spring till the end of September.”

 

A table showing the key information about the 3-1-1 service requests from 2016-2020 in Gloucester-South Nepean ward. Created by Max Bakony. 

 

The pandemic could also be more of a reason, according to Shawn Menard, the vice-chair of the Environmental Protection, Water and Waste Management Committee:

“It’s hard to separate how (the use of plastic bags in green bins) has had an effect versus people being at home for the pandemic,” says Menard. Middleton, Leopold, and Brown all agree.

Even though more appear to be using the green bin, Menard, is unsure whether using plastic bags is an appropriate solution to increasing public composting.

Citing that the recent transition to composting with plastic could be affecting the compost produced by the facility, the vice-chair would like to see some more samples of what happens to the organic waste.

“At the end of the day the federal government is talking about banning single-use plastic bags and that’s probably a good thing,” Menard says of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s intentions to ban all single-use plastics in Canada by 2021.

Leopold agrees that using plastic may not be the most appropriate method to increase green bin use but insists there’s little harm in plastic bags affecting the non-agricultural sourced material produced from the waste.

“If you get any type of contaminant in your compost it’s more of a hard plastic like a pen cap… that’s more likely to get through,” says Leopold. “Film plastic, which is what plastic bags are made of, gets screened out and we never see that in the compost (produced).”

Ariela Summit, an expert on community environmental planning and an assistant to Menard, argues that it never made sense to accept plastic bags into composting when there were so many better methods like limiting the number of trash bags you can put out, or mandating clear trash bags and not allowing organics in them.

“This is not something the city has been willing to do so far,” says Summit.

Though plastic bags inclusion into green bins may be short-lived, Brown believes that they may have done some lasting good.

He admits that a ban on the plastic bags would have a small impact on public composting but “if people are used to using green bins right now, I think you’ll see a lot of people continue to use them.”

During the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, national police-reported of breaking-and-entering incidents have dropped dramatically, and experts say the trend may stay that way.

An analysis of a recent Statistics Canada report revealed a 22 per cent decrease in residential break and enters in Canada between March and June of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. This data was collected from 17 police municipalities across the country

“It’s very easy to explain rates of break and enter,” says Irvin Waller, a professor emeritus of Criminology at the University of Ottawa. Waller has written several books on crime reduction and says these decreases make a lot of sense and can likely be attributed to two factors.

“On the one hand, you have the opportunity,” says Waller. “In the case of COVID, the opportunity has significantly decreased because everybody is at home. If you wanted to break into an apartment or a house, the likelihood is that there’s going to be somebody in there.”

“The other part of the decrease is that there was a CERB,” Waller explains. “They did quite a bit to provide minimal income to people, so that decreased the likelihood that people were going to turn to crime.”

Maria Tcherni-Buzzeo, director of the Criminal Justice Program at the University of New Haven, agrees that economic supports, like the former Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), are likely a big factor in decreased crime rates.

“That kind of safety net essentially guards against situations of desperation where people have no other choice but to go rob somebody just so they can get enough money to get by,” says Tcherni-Buzzeo, an expert in crime trends and patterns, who also finds the decrease in residential break and enters unsurprising.

“Crime tends to align with routine activities of people,” she says.

“Routine activities theory basically says that, for crime to happen, you need a vulnerable victim, a motivated offender, and a lack of guardianship,” she explains. “So, when these three factors coincide, that’s when you get crime.”

An example of this is when break and enters increased after World War II, as more women joined the workforce and left their houses unoccupied during the day.

Now, Tcherni-Buzzeo and Waller say we are experiencing a cultural shift in the opposite direction as people consistently working from home.

 

Residential break and enters have decreased by 22 per cent, while non-residential break and enters have only dropped by 6 per cent since 2019. Chart by Natasha Bulowski. Source: Statistics Canada.

Non-residential break-and-enter rates across Canada, on the other hand, displayed minimal change, only decreasing by 6 per cent from 2019 to 2020, according to the an analysis of the 2020 Statistics Canada report.

Waller says this is likely because, unlike occupied homes, stores that are closed, or operating on reduced hours, still give criminals an opportunity to break in when no one is there.

Although these decreases in break and enters make sense, Waller emphasizes that police reported statistics do not tell the whole story, particularly when it comes to property crimes like breaking and entering.

“Police statistics are incredibly unreliable and are driven by victim behaviour,” he says, explaining that people often decide whether to report a property crime based on the value of the stolen items.

“You don’t have a lot of confidence in the police because you don’t really expect them to find what was stolen,” says Waller, explaining why people may not report the theft of less valuable items.

“But if somebody comes in and steals $20,000 worth of computers or TVs, then you will report it to the police because (otherwise) your insurance company won’t repay you.”

Despite the limitations of police reported data, Waller says the trend is still likely accurate and easily explained by the pandemic.

“The clearest legacy from COVID,” says Waller, “is that people are now working from home and likely to go on working from home, so the opportunity for residential break-ins is going to stay low.”