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With the launch of the pay-as-you-throw garbage system less than a week away for Scarborough residents, one can't help but get the feeling the City of Toronto has literally made a mess of this program.

As it stands now, huge numbers of residents across the city have not received their garbage containers. This is of particular concern in Scarborough where the new system is supposed to start on Nov. 1.

Residents are not getting much information out of the city, unless they take a lot of their own time to go and find the answers, as a story in last week's Scarborough Mirror noted.

What little goodwill local residents may have had for this plan, which claims to be about reducing waste rather than increasing taxes, is rapidly disappearing.

The way it was supposed to work was residents let the city know what size of garbage bin they wanted, and they would be billed or rebated accordingly. This process started last spring, but then hit a major snag when the sizes of bins being ordered did not meet with the city's predictions, leading to a shortage of medium-sized bins.

For the record, a small bin (which holds one bag of garbage) would result in a $10 rebate; a medium bin (which holds one and half bags) costs $39 a year; a large bin (which holds three bags) costs $133 a year; and an extra-large bin (which holds six bags) costs $190 a year. The costs are in addition to the $209 designated on the property tax bill for waste reduction.

Admittedly, it's a complicated system. However, since it was the city that came up with this system, it can't use that an excuse for failing to deliver the bins.

Paying extra for a service already paid for once on property taxes, while being forced to use a designated city trash container, is not an idea most residents would have proposed.

Right now, the shortage of medium bins means thousands of people across the city have not received their containers. The city is scrambling to have more bins made, which is clearly going to cost money, and it is trying to issue special pink garbage bag tags to residents who don't yet have their bins.

What a waste of effort and money.

Further complicating the matter is that the city's special line for information on the new bins is being overwhelmed by calls and is often busy. This just leads to more frustration for residents who are wondering exactly who is driving the garbage truck when it came to the implementation of this plan.

We're all in favour of waste diversion. We support the city's green and blue bin plans. Scarborough homeowners have done an excellent job of supporting those initiatives. Unfortunately, the city has tried to move too quickly in implementing the pay-for-trash system. It hasn't even been a year since the big blue bins arrived in Scarborough, and now we're getting the garbage bins.

The problem is that the garbage bin system is too complicated. In its effort to reward those who produce a small amount of trash, it created the seeds of the very mess it now finds itself in. The plan should have been approached much more slowly, and implemented in a way that would guarantee success and make residents feel they were part of the city's waste solution as opposed to being dumped on.