Réponse proprio:
Thank you, Johanne, for your positive comments about our cottage and for sharing your opinions and suggestions. We're glad you had a good time.
This was the first year we implemented the new trash policy after many years of problems dealing with removal of guests' trash. Frankly, we did not see this as a major issue (it is now common in the home rental business, and commonplace on PEI due to the complexities of their recycling program and the limited garbage pickup in rural areas).
As you discovered, the waste transfer station is directly on the Trans-Canada highway on your way to the bridge off the Island. It takes 5 minutes to drop trash off and costs $5.
It seems that your major pain point is that the policy was not communicated in advance during the booking process... so starting next year we will send our cottage information bulletin to guests immediately upon making a reservation.
We are sorry that you feel that our very detailed email to you explaining the need for the trash policy was not adequate. For the benefit of anyone reading this, I am repeating part of our reply to you here:
"The municipality picks up trash weekly - alternating between compostable material and recyclables every other week. This means compostable (stinky) food trash is picked up every two weeks.
The municipality takes a VERY hard line on sorting of trash and recyclables... the proper clear bags must be used, and sorting must be 100% correct.
The garbage truck workers inspect the trash bags as they are taking them out of the bin.
If the rules are not followed, on the first offence they will not take the trash and they tag the container with an infraction notice. On the second and subsequent offences, they again refuse to take the trash and impose a $75 fine per offence, which we must pay as the property owners.
The onus for the complexity of the sorting compostable materials, recycleables, and waste falls on the guests, who may or may not be used to the rigours of such rules and regulations.
There are three consequences:
1. Someone now needs to sort guests' trash after they have departed.
2. It is now another two weeks before the compostable trash will be picked up by the municipality.
3. We incur a $75 fine.
We do not think it reasonable for anyone to have to sort someone else's trash. We leave it to your imagination to ponder the visual and smell of four-week old garbage (think lobster guts) rotting in the hot plastic garbage container in the July sun. Besides being disgusting, it is a health hazard and we cannot afford to expose guests (and pets, since we are pet-friendly) to this sort of thing.
We have investigated getting a roll-off dumpster for garbage disposal... but the same rules apply to garbage dumped in to roll-off bins...it MUST be sorted and in the proper bags or the whole bin is rejected."
The best solution we have is to have guests deal with their own garbage when they depart.