City of Lethbridge launches phase 1 of curbside recycling

Any homes involved in Phase 1 will receive an introduction letter in the next few days, which will be followed by an information package in the coming weeks.

A release from the city also states they will be invited to connect regularly over the next year with staff to help build a successful curbside recycling program for all of Lethbridge.

Portions of the Country Meadows, Garry Station, Fairmont, Stafford Manor and Victoria Park/Upper Eastside neighbourhoods will be included in Phase 1.

Sanchez says these locations were chosen based on many factors.

“We’ve been very strategic in planning out the phase 1 locations, looking at geographic location, front or rear pickup, street design and the age of the neighbourhood. We wanted to make sure we had a good cross-section of the community to help identify any issues we might have prior to city-wide implementation,” Sanchez said, adding 20 bins will be tested with multi-family complexes as part of phase 1.

The City worked with private recycling companies when choosing the phase 1 locations to ensure there was the least amount of impact on their business.

The new program will provide blue carts to each household for the bi-weekly collection of accepted recyclable material.

Recycling and garbage pick-up will occur on alternating weeks, reducing garbage collection to every other week.

Sanchez also outlined what will be accepted for recycling when things get going.

“At this point we are accepting cardboard, some plastics and any beverage containers as well. Things that won’t be accepted include plastic bags, Styrofoam, or any other types of product that we already take care of through different programs,” Sanchez said.

More details on what is and isn’t acceptable can be found on the city’s website.

Council also approved the construction of a Materials Recovery Facility which will handle the recyclables collected through the curbside program.

The planning and design of the MRF, which will be located at the Waste and Recycling Centre, has been completed and construction of the facility will begin shortly.

According to Sanchez, it’s expected to be operational in early 2019.

A lot of pre-planning went into the rollout of Phase 1, because as Sanchez says the program was only approved in the later part of 2016.

“In reality we really only had 2017 to adjust and to adapt to what we wanted to do moving forward,” he continued. “The last few months we’ve been working with different vendors and consultants, as well as visiting different MRFs throughout the province.”

Sanchez says because of all this consultation and research, they’ve been able to learn from other communities what they need to do to be successful and what to avoid.

The new curbside program is projected to add $7 to monthly residential utility bills, but Phase 1 participants will not be charged until the new fees are added for all residents.

Once the MRF is operational, the sale of the recyclable materials will help offset a portion of the overall cost of the curbside program.

The rest of the community is encouraged to continue recycling as usual until the city-wide rollout in 2019 and recycling stations will remain open for community use for any extra recycling phase 1 participants may have.

Sanchez was also pressed about what would happen if someone either refuses to participate in the Phase 1 pilot, or once things are operational in 2019, continuously puts the wrong materials out for collection.

He says that the trucks will have cameras, so any bins collected from homes that are contaminated can be marked.

“One of the good things about being one of the last communities in Alberta to implement curbside recycling is we’ve been able to talk to people in Calgary, and other municipalities. They’ve found that communication is key. When you follow up with people, they begin to understand this is a good thing for the community, and it cuts down on the contamination of the recyclables collected,” Sanchez stated.

ADDENDUM: As for what will happen to the recycled material, Manager of Waste and Recycling Services, Joel Sanchez says during Phase 1 and while the MRF is being built, the plastics collected will go to a local plastic lumber maker, some of the metals will go to a local metal processing facility and the paper and cardboard collected will be taken to North American mills. Once the program is in full swing, he says it will go to commodity brokers once it’s sorted here in Lethbridge.

“They’re going to get all of this product and they’re going to try to get the most profitable arrangement for this material once it’s separated…it’s not that [China] is not accepting recycleables. What they did is they increased their quality considerations. So the percentage before? They didn’t have any quality controls in place. Now they are talking about one percent. So everytime they have a load, and that load is contaminated more than one percent, they are rejecting that load. So again, here the message is quality, quality. We need to make sure that whatever we take, we can do the separation and the material that we’re going to generate has the quality that will meet the requirements from China.”

Sanchez also says there are other countries that also accept recycled material that do not or will not have the same stringent qualifications as China, and the city is designing the recycling process here, so they can adjust to the quality they need.

by Aaron Mahoney (@Mahones93 on Twitter) with files from Lara Fominoff (@LaraFominoff on Twitter)

City of Lethbridge launches phase 1 of curbside recycling

What's Happening