The new city-issued recycling bin has taken over my porch like an unwelcome squatter. I had actually fussed and fretted over which size to order. I produce a lot of recyclable waste, which I store in the basement of my narrow 100-year-old home. The house has little frontage, no alleyway or garage, no access to the backyard from the street, and a porch cluttered with the trappings of urban correctness: two bicycles for commuting, numerous baskets for shopping runs, a child seat for trips to the park. I eventually chose the smallest bin, resolving to be more diligent about flattening the milk and juice cartons. Yet it was still too wide to fit behind the bikes, too tall to sit in front of the window, too wobbly and unpredictable to leave in a toddler’s path and too cumbersome to wheel through the house. I am now in negotiations with my neighbour, a landscape architect, regarding the construction of a custom shack for the bins—our very own waste-transfer station.

Most downtowners are less resigned than I am. In the sardine tin that is Cabbage­town, residents complained so much that the city has already had to bend its own rules. Geoff Rathbone, Toronto’s top waste bureaucrat, admits that a number of exceptions have been made. “In extreme situations, we will allow people to use blue bags and bag tags,” he concedes. As of mid-May, some 350 “extreme” homes had been exempted from bin use, but with only 65 per cent of the city’s residences having received theirs so far, the list of objectors was sure to grow. The new system might work well in a suburban subdivision, but not in older downtown neighbourhoods. As the bins were being distributed through Trinity-Spadina, Councillor Adam Vaughan issued a bulletin telling residents how to gain an exemption. “People have no room for them,” he says. “They can’t be carried up and down stairs.” He envisions hundreds of bins blocking fire escapes. “And this is all being sold to us in the spirit of a nice, sunny spring day. Imagine a snowstorm.”

Meanwhile, another bin is on the way: this month, the city begins issuing its new grey garbage containers, which are big enough for Oscar the Grouch and his extended family. By the end of this year, we’ll be on a user-fee system: the smaller your garbage bin, the less you’ll pay, with prices rigged to encourage more recycling. The second bins will likely only intensify the outcry, but they have the full support of the mayor. “What we are doing is going to be groundbreaking and revolutionary,” David Miller says proudly, even though many other cities—Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver—already use similar systems. It’s just a different version of the same old bins and trucks. The only true reform will be the invoices for homeowners.

What the bins have really done is force us to examine the relationship between our space and our waste, because the balance between them is reaching a tipping point. On average, each Torontonian produces 384 kilograms of garbage per year—including organics, recycling and landfill waste. In high-density, high-foot-traffic areas of the city, where people tend to live in small spaces—think Spadina and Dundas—the problem literally spills over: the trash can’t be collected quickly or frequently enough, and in the heat of summer the stench never dissipates. Our homes are only getting smaller: as the city intensifies with townhouses, condos and high-rises, a trash storage problem looms on the horizon. Apartment dwellers and condo owners don’t have to deal with the blue and grey bins; their waste is picked up from steel Dumpsters by forklift trucks. But the buildings still dedicate a lot of square footage to storing trash. One architect I spoke to despaired of how garbage affects the design process: dedicated rooms and chutes on every floor, wide back alleys with more than six metres of clearance for the trucks and forklifts—enough space to build three or four additional units. And out in the public realm, all the new developments are poised to resemble Spadina: sidewalks teeming with residents, visitors, businesses—and litter.