It’s not easy running a large and diverse city such as Calgary. We’re fortunate to have the wise and generous-hearted people at city hall to instruct us how to go about our daily duties.Who knows what trouble we’d get into if we didn’t have thousands of well-meaning and well-paid civic workers advising elected officials how we should be behaving and conducting ourselves.There was a time long ago, for instance, when we put out our garbage in an aluminum trash can or burned it in a barrel in the backyard. To illustrate how backward we were, environmentalists and the folks in city government invented the black plastic bin to contain our garbage, and we put the dark ages behind us. Thankfully, today, the only people who can set fires in their backyards are neighbours. And only then on particularly hot evenings when the smoke is certain to make its way into your bedroom and other indoor spaces designed for respite and comfort.Recently, of course, we’ve added green and blue bins to our mandatory arsenal of waste receptacles. It only makes sense that we should pay more to rid ourselves of the growing mounds of detritus, such as unsolicited leaflets delivered through the mail, given the necessity of more frequent pickups.It’s kind of like our water service from the city. We pay to not only have the water delivered to our homes, but to take it away — even if it’s used to sprinkle our lawns and gardens.Again, this is where the wisdom of the city is invaluable. Most people would think if you paid to have a service such as water provided to your home, it would be a no-brainer that it would have to flow away. No. It’s not at all that simple.Perhaps there’s no better example of taxpayers’ ignorance of the challenges of running a city than paper bags. That’s right; we are so ineffectual, we require the insight of bureaucrat-led politicians to help us handle even such light-weight matters as wet paper bags.You see, if you go to a fast-food restaurant and don’t want to put your fries and hamburger in your crotch or coat pocket, you should feel remorse. So much guilt, in fact, that until recently, Calgarians were forced to pay a small sum to the large multinational corporations that operate these prolific purveyors of saturated fats and salt.Calgarians weren’t smart enough to recognize the brilliance of the big thinkers at city hall, so the bylaw has been scrapped — thrown on the trash heap, if you will. Never mind the expense of this costly and fruitless exercise in good intention. The blame rests with Calgarians, who couldn’t grasp the significance of the commonsense measure, no matter how much money was invested in informing citizens that they must comply.Some city councillors have thankfully identified recyclable products such as paper bags as an existential problem, so it’s just a matter of time until they are able to hire more consultants to design a new system to ensure that drive-thru fries arrive at home as God intended: unprotected by a paper bag, cold, unappetizing and barely visible between the seatbelt and the centre console of your car. The errant bits of fried potato end up in a dusty grave — just beyond reach in the narrow crevice — along with lint and naughty coins that slide out of your pocket.A young cashier at a southeast McDonald’s drive-thru was recently asked about Calgary’s pay-for-a-brown-bag system. She responded that 80 per cent of patrons purchased a brown bag. This just goes to show you how smart the city is and how foolish we Calgarians are. We can’t even do as we’re told.The reason we know the city is smarter than ratepayers is because many obedient Calgarians are now setting their leaves and other garden waste out on the curb. It’s a ritual of spring. The all-important green recycling bin, like a socialist general dispatched by a tin-pot dictator, is joined by a tidy army of hefty brown paper bags containing unwanted branch bits, grass and who knows what.These aren’t the sort of pint-sized bags that might contain a measly Big Mac. These are sturdy and tall, as befitting their role in helping the city collect seasonal waste.To the great unwashed, there might appear to be a contradiction here: a brown bag at the burger joint is an environmental blight to be punished, but bigger and thicker single-use brown paper bags concealing grass clippings and sticks, is an environmental necessity. A hero in the fight to keep Calgarians’ properties tidy and make it easier for the city to perform its job.Running the city is much more than filling potholes and keeping public parks presentable. The city understands that if it is going to solve the self-declared climate emergency, it can’t let small nuisances such as potholes become a distraction. That’s why tiny brown paper bags are in the cross-hairs of the burgeoning bureaucracy. Unless, of course, the brown bags carry branches instead of burgers.Don’t despair, however. We can only hope the number of bins jockeying for space in our driveways increases commensurate to the need. It’s only a matter of time until Calgarians set out a brown bin — this one to dispose of meaningless city hall doublespeak, citywide blanket zoning, tone deaf politicians and other unpleasant messes we can do without.David Marsden is a Calgary writer and editor. He was previously managing editor of the Red Deer Advocate and editorial page editor of the Calgary Herald.
