The city pays a private company to install and maintain these bins and receives between $14,000 and $18,000 in annual revenue from them. (Leslie Young/CBC)

Pedestrians on one of downtown Ottawa's busiest streets who are determined to recycle their empty bottles and cans should prepare for a long walk.

There are no public recycling bins on the bustling sidewalks of Bank Street between Holmwood Avenue in the Glebe and Queen Street in the downtown core, but there are 57 garbage cans along the same road. Despite a reader comment suggesting the presence of municipal recycling bins at Bank and Gilmour streets, two reporters were unable to find any there.

Their absence is partly because Clive Doucet, the city councillor for the Glebe, doesn't allow the city’s public recycling bins in his ward.

“They take up so much room on the pavement," he said. "They take up advertising space, and they’re destructive to local commerce.”

Ottawa’s 300 municipal recycling bins are each as big as three newspaper boxes side-by-side, with advertising panels down the front and back. They are often found at bus stops along major transit routes. The city pays a private company to install and maintain the bins and receives between $14,000 and $18,000 in total annual revenue from them.

Doucet said the bins block storefronts and Bank Street’s narrow sidewalks.

“If you look at streets, they are our city’s largest public asset,” Doucet said. “If you’re going to intensify the city, you’ve got to make sure your public spaces are wonderful places, to walk and enjoy in all kinds of different ways. You don’t do that by privatizing public spaces, which is what these recycling bins are.”

Doucet said bottle-toting pedestrians should take the containers home to recycle.

'Most people just throw them out'

Sabrina Bowman, a co-ordinator for the local environmental group Ecology Ottawa, said Friday she expects more "hard-core environmentalists" would do that.

"But most people just throw them out,” she added.

Bowman said she understands where Doucet is coming from but isn't convinced by his argument.

Lots of cities have recycling bins, she said. She thinks there must be a happy medium, such as finding a way to make the bins smaller and more attractive.

Councillor Diane Holmes, whose ward contains all of Bank Street north of the Queensway, did not ban the bins. She is not sure why there are no bins on her portion of Bank Street, but she thinks that significant construction along the road could be one reason.

About 30 of the city's 300 recycling bins were removed recently because they were badly damaged, said city staff.

They will not be replaced because the contract for the bins expires in 2010.

City staff are working on a new plan for all of Ottawa’s street furniture, including transit shelters, bus-stop benches and recycling bins. A preliminary draft calls for up to 600 litter or recycling containers, 80 per cent of which will carry advertising. The other 20 per cent would be placed in locations that would not otherwise have bins because of advertising concerns.