An interesting idea.... I watched a lady packing her groceries into reusable cloth bags.... very environmentally friendly. But what did she buy? 3 - that THREE - packages of plastic garbage bag liners!

If you do away with all plastic bags... what will people put their garbage into? Wrapping in newspaper? Dumping lose into garbage pins? How will one deal with the smell and the rats.

This idea needs more thought.

What did we use before plastic bags?
When I was a child groceries came home in brown paper bags.

I remember the brown paper bags that my parents brought groceries home with when I was a kid. I also remember when pop came in glass bottles that were returned to the store for a deposit.
I have heard that before the war composting was common and food waste was just put in steel garbage cans. Toronto also had a major rat problem back then.

The City of Toronto should 1) sell all its garbage trucks and lay off the garbage collectors; 2) halve general welfare (not the permanent kind) rates; 3) use all the money it saves to buy garbage (so much per kg, all cash money, no questions asked, no receipts issued); that it 4) then feeds into 3 or 4 large incinerators sited at surplus former City Halls scattered around the megalopolis.

I can picture it now - efficient 7/24 garbage collection - just put it out and its gone, even industrious urchins knocking on your door to ask if you could please spare some garbage? (the same ones now sitting on street corners smoking cigarettes with cardboard homeless signs...)

The free electricity generated by the the incinerators could be used to illuminate a giant inflatable David Miller monument (hot air recaptured from City Hall)