I’m not an overly grumpy guy, though you might not know from reading these columns.

Unfortunately, there are a number of things about this city that get in the way of our pursuit of happiness. There are, however, some things that aid us in that quest. One of them is EPCOR.

We judge companies like EPCOR not by what they say they are going to do, but by what they actually do. I was reminded of that last week when I returned home to find a flood in front of my house. A water main had broken an hour earlier and an EPCOR crew was on scene fixing the problem. When I asked if I was going to be able to take a shower in the morning, I was told that was unlikely. I could understand that. Digging up a road and joining two pieces of pipe isn’t a walk in the park. Imagine my surprise and pleasure when in the morning I realized water had been restored before the crew had to stop work at 11 p.m. Like all great companies EPCOR under-promised and over-delivered.

On another note entirely, how about those singing recycling bins? They show some creativity and whimsy on the city’s part and they’re not costing a lot of money. However, they do lead me to ask a couple questions.

Since we cannot tell where recyclable materials actually come from, how are we to know that these things will actually get people to modify their behaviour? Surely we’re not going to check to see. And if you think awareness equals compliance, ask yourself how many speeders are unaware of the speed limit.

My second question is why didn’t the wizards of waste management ramp up their communications? Getting ink in the local newspapers and air time on television doesn’t quite have the impact on public awareness it once did.

What organizations want now is to post a video on YouTube and have it go viral. I think a quick clip of someone opening the lid of a recycling bin and being serenaded has the potential to do just that. It’s the kind of thing that gets played around the world and shows up on global newscasts. For a mere $160,000 we could have bought ourselves a whole lot of publicity and shown the world how creative and cool we are.

Terence Harding is a corporate communicator.  He’s a keen observer of all things Edmonton; edmontonletters@metronews.ca.