Pilot project aims to keep Lethbridge bins standing – Lethbridge [Video]

Recycling bins lie strewn across the street all over the west side of Lethbridge.

And the blue bins are the most likely of the three types of bins to be blown over when the wind howls, according to James Nicholls, the city’s waste and environment collections manager.

“The material that’s being placed in the cart is obviously the biggest culprit,” Nicholls said. “It’s lightweight papers, plastic, and so just that lack of weight on the blue cart is actually one of the main culprits for it tipping over.”

Even full of materials, many of the bins fall. Some residents have to pick up their fallen receptacles multiple times per week.

“Pretty constant when it’s this windy down here,” resident Greg Shulte said. “Sometimes three, four times per week, picking it up with cardboard and plastic.”

Nicholls said the lid “really acts like a sail.”

“When that cart isn’t closed properly, it can sit there and bang up and down …