Toronto's City Council approved a proposed waste-diversion plan that will see homeowners charged different fees depending on how much trash they produce.

Beginning in 2008, a number of different sized garbage bins will be offered depending on how much garbage each home produces and homeowners will be charged varying prices for garbage removal.

The plan, drafted by council's executive committee, proposes the city remove $209 each year from homeowners' tax bills for the new plan.

Residents who opt for bins larger than 75-litres will have to purchase them from the city.

The city is planning on the following garbage can sizes and costs:

  • A 75-litre bin will cost $209 a year;
  • A 120-litre bin will cost $250;
  • A 240-litre bin will cost $310; and
  • A 360-litre bin will cost $360.

The program is expected to bring in millions of dollars in revenue for the cash-strapped city.

The city hopes the plan will facilitate 70 per cent waste diversion from landfills by the year 2010.

Pilot projects in downtown Toronto and Scarborough are expected to begin later this summer. The city hopes to have the project up and running across Toronto by next summer.

"We change fundamentally how we do the pick up at the curb so you are going to get a blue box on wheels and we change how your garbage bill works so it comes off the taxes, and like your water bill, it goes on to a separate bill so you can see what it is costing us to recycle 70 per cent," Coun. Gord Perks told CTV News.

"I've never seen a plan as comprehensive as this in any North American city and I've been working on waste management issues for 20 years."

But not everyone as city hall is as supportive of the new initiative.

"The equivalent of a four-per-cent tax increase is what the mayor and his supporters are hiding from the public," Coun. Case Ootes told CTV News on Wednesday.

"They talk about the objective of recycling, and I'll support that, but he (Mayor David Miller) does it in such a way that he hides the fact that there is a four-per-cent tax increase or the equivalent of it and I think that's dishonest and it's not transparent government."

With a report from CTV's Desmond Brown