Five million dollars is the expected annual cost for full implementation of the Green Bin, which would recycle so-called ‘wet’ waste such as fruit and vegetable peelings, table scraps and disposable diapers. What was on the table Monday night was a pilot project to work out the kinks. It would service 750 homes and cost about $100,000.

However, as Ward 14 councillor Cheryl Miller accurately observed, once a pilot project has been successful it is very difficult to stop the full runout. And the four committee members who voted to delay – besides Mrs. Miller they were Controller Bud Polhill and councillors Roger Caranci (Ward 1) and Paul Van Meerbergen (Ward 10). No surprise there.

Voting in favour of the pilot project were Nancy Branscombe (Ward 5) and Paul Hubert (Ward 8). No surprised there, either.

Now it’s up to the full council to decide, this Monday, whether London should start getting on side with this worthwhile program this coming year or wait and let a new group decide next year. Does this group want a legacy as progressively committed to doing all it can to protect and preserve the environment, or a legacy as waiters?

The $100,000 cost wouldn’t put much of a squeeze on this year’s budget. Finding $5 million next year could certainly cause the new council some concern. But on the other hand, if each council worried what the next one might do or how it might do it, nothing would ever get done.

The Green Bin program should be installed because it is the right thing to do. Recycling material into something to be used again is always preferable to stuffing it into a landfill that is slowly but surely filling up.

Are the votes there to do it? A good question, one that might well come down to a deciding vote by Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco-Best. And why not? Our mayor wants a fourth term. It’s time for her to decide, with everything on the line, whether she wants to lead this council somewhere important – or be a waiter.