A Toronto city councillor is urging the city to throw its contracts with Astral Media in the trash and revamp its Street Furniture Program after voicing concerns about poorly maintained public garbage bins.
Ward 12 Toronto-St. Paul’s Councillor Josh Matlow took to social media to criticize the contracts the city has with Astral Media for garbage collection and maintenance, where the city manages collection of garbage, and Astral maintains the bins.
However, Matlow says the contracts should be “thrown in the garbage where they belong.”
“The bins break, the info (ad) signs clutter our sidewalks & they’re all poorly maintained,” Matlow said in a post on X. “This should come back in-house to provide better service, accountability & a cleaner, more beautiful Toronto.”
In 2007, the City of Toronto signed a 20-year contract with Astral Media for the maintenance of 25,000 street furniture including transit shelters, benches, and 11,000 garbage bins.
In return, Astral was provided with advertising exclusivity on select transit shelters and information pillars.
However, as the contracts draw close to an end, Matlow tells Now Toronto that he’s urging the city not to renew them.
“It’s almost every main street where you’ll find garbage bins that are broken, the door’s wide open, it’s overflowing. This is a ubiquitous problem, there is no debate,” he said.
Matlow says bringing the service back in-house will not only fix the issue, but will put an end to the hurdles Torontonians must cross when reporting them to the city.
“You’re expected to call 311, 311 then has to report it to transportation services, transportation services then has to reach out to a private company to ask them to do something about it,” he said. “It’s nonsense, and it’s not helpful.”
Matlow’s criticism sparked discussions from people online who agreed that the bins have not been properly taken care of.
“They’re disgusting and an embarrassment to our city,” an X user said.
“Totally agree, terrible contract, never worked,” another user said.
“It’s the maintenance that’s the problem, they are never power washed so they are filthy, when they are emptied the solid waste guys need to close the doors properly and make sure they are fastened,” another user said.
Some users responded with their own images depicting bins that were left open, and some that were overflowing with little-to-no room to add more trash.
According to the City of Toronto, garbage collection runs 20 hours per day, seven days a week, with more than 50,000 collections of litter bins per week.
In a statement to Now Toronto the City of Toronto says that bins are regularly patrolled to identtify broken or full bins, which are prioritized for service.
“Since January, Astral has completed more than 3,800 repairs on litter receptacles,” the statement said.
The statement also said the city is currently piloting bin sensor technology to faster react to full or near full litter bins using real time data.
Although a decision to renew the contracts is not currently on the city’s agenda, Matlow says his “campaign” is meant to pressure the city to consider an option that works for everybody.
“It affects us all when we walk down the street to see, you know, broken, overflowing, garbage cans… I think we can do better, I know we can.” he said.
