I live in a twelve-bedroom student house. In a single week, we have, at minimum, between two and three large bags of garbage. So far, the city has taken our bags, but this will soon change once we run out of trash tags. While my crowded housing situation might be unique, many other students are in a similarly tight position in regards to Hamilton’s garbage and recycling policy.
Since 2010, Hamilton has had a one-bag per limit policy for homeowners. This means that the city will collect only one bag of trash during the weekly curbside collection, with no limits placed on the amount of recycling collected.
The policy was created to improve the city’s waste diversion efforts, with a goal to divert 65 per cent of residential garbage away from landfills by 2021. With the city’s waste diversion rate currently standing in the mid-40 per cent, it is evident that there is still much work to be done.
The policy has undergone several revisions since its initial implementation but has stayed firm in its one-bag limit. The most important revision has been the increase in available trash tags. If more than one garbage bag needs to be picked up for the week, the additional bags require trash tags.
Each household receives 12 trash tags and can request once per year, with no fee, up to 14 more. Once requested, no more trash tags can be ordered until the following year.
This translates to 26 additional bags of trash that can be collected per year. While this seems like a lot, that is not enough to sustain a house that produces at least two bags of trash per week for a year. Untagged bags of trash are not collected, so where does this excess trash go?
The city’s recommendation is that excess waste is dropped off at the nearest community recycling centre, with an associated fee. Unfortunately, many students lack the time, resources and finances to utilize these centres. What typically results then is either illegal dumping or the storing of excess waste somewhere in the household, with hopes that it will be collected during the next collection period.
Both alternatives have their consequences. Illegal dumping often counteracts any environmental benefits that a one-bag limit creates. While storing excess waste in one’s house can temporarily solve the issue, this can lead to a build-up of trash that has the potential to cause a number of health and safety concerns.
It is not feasible for large student households to greatly reduce their total waste to meet a one-bag limit. There ought to then be a balance between reaching the city’s waste-reduction goals and forcing students to look for alternative, costly means to dispose of their waste. Until changes are made, these issues will continue to plague the city.
A complete elimination of the one-bag limit is not necessary; what should be developed is a special consideration for student households. A special consideration policy has already been developed for certain individuals that are likely to have more than one garbage bag every week.
Households that involve people with medical circumstances, families with two or more children under the age of four, registered home day cares, or agricultural businesses can apply for special consideration. Upon approval, these households are given extra trash tags that can be used on a need-be basis. By listing student households as one of the accepted special consideration cases, this can allow large student households to request additional support from the city as needed.
While obviously the one-bag trash limit was founded with good intentions, it is ultimately an unrealistic policy for every student house to abide by. With the appropriate change, however, the city can continue to strive towards its environmental goals while accommodating its large student population.
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Voting may change drastically in Hamilton, as the Ontario Municipal Board votes on how the city ought to divide up the city’s ward boundaries.
The discussion began earlier this year after city council hired a third party consulting firm to review the current ward boundaries and how they interact with population distribution throughout the city.
The firm created a series of different suggestions based on their own research, but city council ultimately scrapped these suggestions in order to adjust the boundaries themselves. They have focused their efforts on ensuring suburban residents have more representation in city council.
Local citizens have taken issue with this process, some accusing the councilors of gerrymandering, or the process of dividing up geographic areas to give a politician more political control.
One of the main issues at hand focuses on whether ward 1, which includes Ainslie Wood and Westdale, should be split up and absorbed into ward 13, which is the ward representing Dundas.
Joey Coleman, a local journalist, has expressed concerns about splitting up the student vote throughout two different wards.
"We are affected the exact same way by decisions made by council, and often times, disproportionately so. These may range from issues regarding by-law enforcement, to housing regulation, and investments or divestment in transit."
Chunky Ibe
President
McMaster Students Union
“The Dundas councillor has no reason to effectively represent student interests as the students are a small segment of ward 13 with their potential votes (even if they voted at the average of 40 per cent, which they do not) diluted among 30,000 residents of Dundas,” Coleman wrote in an analysis from Oct. 11.
At the Oct. 25 OMB hearing, McMaster Students Union president Chukky Ibe spoke against the ward 1 split, arguing that the McMaster is a cohesive community of interest.
“We are affected the exact same way by decisions made by council, and often times, disproportionately so. These may range from issues regarding by-law enforcement, to housing regulation, and investments or divestment in transit,” Ibe said. “This community is first of campaigned too, and then disproportionally targeted, and scapegoated for political gain.”
Within his delegation, Ibe referenced the specific issues affecting students, such as transit and policing which affect students disproportionately.
“When the major bus route is altered through McMaster, or service reduced in the summer, it is this community that feels the brunt of it. When our councillor Johnson worked to increase the presence of student by-law officers patrolling our neighbourhoods, it is our students that pay fines close to 700 dollars,” he said.
Ibe expressed particular concern about the student neighbourhood’s access to city funding, particularly the Area Rating Reserve Fund. This $1.5 million fund is given to wards 1 through 8 in order to help facilitate local infrastructure projects.
If the ward 1 split is approved, students who live in ward 13 will lose access to this project, as the largely suburban area of Dundas does not receive this funding, instead relying on property taxes to pay for these projects.
“Taking away a significant part of our community will weaken the incentive, elected officials have to heed the concerns of their constituency. We lose our critical mass in one regions, and in the other region, our population becomes deeply insignificant, further entrenching this negligence by council on the issues that matter to us,” Ibe said.
The OMB has previously voted that students count as a community of interest. In Nov. 2013, the OMB voted that the main student neighbourhoods in Kingston were their own cohesive communities. The OMB will release their decision as soon as possible.
By: Owen Angus-Yamada
The time is coming for students to put down their books, close their laptops and stop biting their nails. Summer is a time for the beach, bike rides and of course, getting a job. For some students, a summer job is a stepping stone in gaining valuable work experience. For others, it’s about maximizing your earnings in the four-month window to pay for everything the school year entails.
A lengthy and gruelling interviewing process is an unfortunate necessity for many in the job search, and one I am not personally looking forward to. However, as I have experienced, far too many companies take advantage of students’ desire for an easy-to-get job that’s also high paying. The truth is that it’s hard getting a good summer job, and it’s easy to be tricked by these companies targeting students with big claims.
You’ve probably seen Property Stars in the Student Centre or have had a College Pro advocate come to one of your lectures telling you about an exciting opportunity for you to make more than $100 a day by working your own hours and being an entrepreneur. If you aren’t immediately suspicious of their claims, then just remember that if it’s too good to be true, then it probably isn’t true. I personally worked for a company like Property Stars a few summers ago, and I can say that while some of their claims can be achieved, the road leading to achievement is far from transparent. It’s easy to end up overwhelmed and at a loss.
The truth is that it's hard getting a good summer job, and it's easy to be tricked by these companies targeting students with big claims.
What these companies don’t say upfront is that the position is full commission and you aren’t guaranteed to earn a penny. They tantalize you with thoughts that you will be earning $100 to $400 a day. In the hiring stage, hiring managers embellish the positives and leave out all the negatives regarding the position. They want you on board because they get you to sign a contract, which means money in their own pockets. Other lines in the contract can force you to agree to being charged nonnegotiable amounts of money. The companies do a good job of making you feel like you will be earning so much that it won’t even matter. It’ll leave you wondering what you were thinking when you agreed.
These companies are also good at framing the difficult and stressful aspects of the job as something that is easy for anyone to solve. All you need to do is work harder. Unfortunately, not everyone can successfully go door-to-door looking for sales, and if you find out that you can’t, then working harder isn’t going do much. I’ve seen many students work long hours during the summer with companies like these and lose money.
These types of companies go after students because we are still naive and believe that a high-paying, experience-building summer job can land right in our laps. If you are applying to any sort of summer job, you must ask plenty of questions. A job where an employer gets you excited to start working and gives you the position without an interview deserves plenty of skepticism.
Unless you have that one friend or family member who “has connections” and can “pull some strings for you,” then you better put your nice suit on and prepare your best questions for the interviewer because no one eats for free.
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By: John Ruf
When renting, students generally have two options: either pay separate monthly utility bills for water, electricity and gas, or pay their landlord a flat rate every month. Many students living off campus opt for the latter — students pay a set price for monthly utilities and the landlord pockets the excess. How well does this system work?
The first disadvantage is that students have no financial motivation to conserve energy. They act like customers at an all-you-can-eat buffet, consuming as much as possible and giving no thought to waste. People like to joke that students are cheap and eat nothing but Kraft Dinner and ramen noodles, but in regard to our energy consumption we don’t tend to skimp. Students leave lights on, take hour-long showers and crank up the heat. Living like this, students might miss the opportunity to learn about energy conservation while living independently; a lesson that is integral to combatting our unsustainable lifestyles.
Because landlords have the potential to make a profit on student’s utility payments one would expect them to strive for energy efficiency by using LED light bulbs and proper insulation. However, this does not seem to be the case. Student houses often have old and inefficient appliances, insufficient insulation, and incandescent light bulbs. Since student rental property is an investment, most landlords want to minimize their initial capital input.
Unfortunately, the alternative to paying your landlord a monthly flat rate for utilities is not much better. Students who pay the bill themselves might be more likely to turn off lights and keep the furnace on low, but positive action might end there. Without profit as motivation, landlords will be even less likely to invest in an energy efficient home, and because students have relatively short tenancies, they won’t purchase expensive energy efficient products that take many years to become worthwhile.
Most economists agree that sustainable behaviour is achievable through strategically implemented incentives. The question becomes which is more likely to lead to positive change: students’ desires to live cheaply? Or landlords’ desires to maximize profits? So far, neither has worked. As behavioural economist Dan Ariely wrote in his book Predictably Irrational, “money, as it turns out, is very often the most expensive way to motivate people.” Perhaps it is time to turn our attention to other motivational tools to improve student housing and to reduce wasteful energy practices.
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