Curbside Recycling Issues

There’s been some discussion over the curbside recycling program and whether or not the additional $4.39 charge for the service is fair, given the fact that we all already pay $7.82 in recycling charges in the city.

I have to admit that I may have mistakenly given bad information regarding the current service. In the Daily Herald Tribune article, it is implied that the entire $7.82 fee goes to Recycle Plus, when in fact that isn’t true. The fee is a combination of efforts between Aquatera and Recycle Plus. Aquatera runs the landfill, Eco-Centre and is in charge of managing the other recycle depots. Recycle Plus collects the material from the depots (blue bin locations) and processes the recyclables by compacting, sorting, transporting and sometimes selling the processed goods.

Recycle Plus has a contract in place with Aquatera for the depot service until the end of 2012. The value of the contract varies depending on how much material is processed. Recycle Plus thinks that the average per household is about $3 per month, while Aquatera feels that the number is closer to $4.50 per household per month.

The additional costs to the consumer are for running recycling services at the Eco Centre and the city landfill. On top of the cardboard, paper, plastic, tin, etc. that we are allowed to recycle in the blue bins, Aquatera offers additional services. Aquatera collects fluorescent light bulbs, batteries, paint, oil and other hazardous material. They also take larger appliances at the landfill and e-waste. The collection and processing of this material also has a cost associated with it.

When I mentioned in the paper that after 2012 some of the costs would drop off, I was referring to the Recycle Plus portion and not the remaining Aquatera portion. I was a little embarrassed that I didn’t make myself clear. It’s difficult when you only have a few minutes after a Council Meeting to provide information to the media.

In any case, there is a little controversy over the overlapping service between implementing the curbside program and the expiration of the Recycle Plus contract. Note that Recycle Plus is mainly responsible for the processing of the collected material. The new curbside program would be awarded to a different company who plans to collect the material and send it to a processing facility in a larger centre (Edmonton, Calgary or Red Deer). What I’ve been told is that these other facilities are offering much lower processing costs and the savings are passed onto our residents. That is why Aquatera has chosen not to continue the contract with Recycle Plus.

As for the period of overlap, residents would be asked to pay a redundant $3 or $4.00 per month to have both services in operation for a while. I believe that some overlap is required anytime you switch from one service to another. Perhaps the time period for this overlap is too long. I admit that I was quite excited about the prospect of curbside recycling that I probably didn’t give as much attention to the reaction of the fees by the general public. The way I saw it, we spend more than $3 a month on gas driving to and from the recycling depot in my household. Also, the surveys showed that over 80% of the public wanted this type of convenient service. Since this motion passed unanimously, I assume that others on Council felt similarly.

I believe that we should look for opportunities to encourage recycling and make recycling more accessible to the community. Diversion of waste from our landfill will save us millions of dollars in the future by not having to find a new landfill site and not having to build and manage that site. However, this is not an initiative that would suffer from a short delay. I would be open to delaying implementation of the curbside recycling program by a year, until the spring of 2012. This would be a good compromise for everyone and would give us time to properly deal with the current depots (a meeting with Aquatera indicated that delaying for a year would not be advisable since Council already passed the motion to go ahead -- it was worth asking though ~ Nov. 2010). It wouldn’t make sense to delay it any further than that because we don’t want to go without recycling services and the spring is the best time to start a new program. That being said, it may not be possible to make that change since the new council may not be in place before the new contract is signed. Motions of council are acted on as soon as they are passed and the decision to go ahead has been made.