Halifax plans to crack down on litterbugs

The Environment and Sustainability committee wants the city to beef up its littering bylaws and recommended council do just that.

Since 2021 the city’s solid waste staff have been beefing up education while enforcing municipal dumping bylaws. As part of the education campaign the city has also been doing some learning. The city’s old bylaw said that the person whose garbage it is, is responsible for getting rid of it. But staff have learned that sometimes people will hire a company to get rid of some garbage and the hired company gets rid of that garbage by doing illegal dumping. One of the changes being recommended is holding the person who did the dumping responsible, as opposed to the person who initially owned the garbage.

The city is also planning on lowering what the standard for dumping is. It used to be that one garbage bag would not be considered dumping, but should council approve this new bylaw, one bag will be considered dumping.

City staff also told councillors that many of the city’s 200 drive-thrus got rid of the drive-thru garbage cans. In order to prevent litter from polluting the HRM the city now requires drive-thrus to have garbage cans. Although it should be noted that the city is not trying to prevent the garbage generated by cars (like the micro plastics in our oceans) as drive-thrus themselves are still allowed in the HRM.

Also at this meeting the city directed the CAO to start buying renewable energy from both Roswall and the Green Choice Program to help the HRM meet its HalifACT goals. The committee is also re-writing a letter to the province asking for the province to update the building codes. The provincial government is currently delaying the new building code changes for no clear reason, but if these changes are not adopted it may jeopardize the federally promised Housing Accelerator Fund money.