Preparations for curbside recycling on track for spring 2019

Mayor Chris Spearman says curbside recycling is something the community has been waiting for and is excited about, and he’s proud that they’re taking this positive step towards becoming a more environmentally conscious community.

“It’s great to see everything is on schedule, and my compliments to the staff who are working hard to make this happen,” Spearman said. “Many residents in Lethbridge are looking forward to having curbside recycling, and I think it’s going to be a great day when we provide that to the citizens in the community.”

To-date, phase 1 residents have helped divert 48,308 kg of recyclable material from the landfill. Most of this material, 68 percent, has been fibres (paper and cardboard) followed by 11 percent plastics, 3 percent metals and 2 percent other material. Phase 1 has seen about 15 percent contamination (dirty or unaccepted material).

Joel Sanchez, General Manager for the City of Lethbridge Waste and Recycling department, says the residents participating in Phase 1 have been such an important part of developing their program.

“We’ve had time to collect good feedback and develop processes and education that will help ensure a successful and sustainable program for Lethbridge.”

Officials are using Phase 1 in order to implement what they’ve learned into the city-wide implementation.

“The most important part that we want to stress is quality, the quality of the material has to be there,” Sanchez continued. “We are working really hard, that’s probably where we have the majority of our efforts at this time, to let people know what materials are in, what materials are going to be out and how they need to prepare for curbside collection.”

One of the main items Sanchez and other staff from the Waste and Recycling Centre wanted to talk about was the MRF, or the Materials Recovery Facility, that will sort and process the recycled materials collected from the city-wide curbside recycling program.

The facility is being built, and they’re planning to have it fully enclosed by the end of this year.

“Equipment install is going to happen early in the new year, after that we’re going to be doing some testing and we expect the facility to be ready for the spring of 2019. We’re going to start delivering the carts probably around later in April to residents,” Sanchez said.

Construction on the facility is on time and on budget, according to Sanchez, and once they install the equipment early in the year, then they will do all the testing and commissioning and at that point, they’ll have everything in place for delivering the program.

“We’re going to be doing the rollout for all the residents, it’s probably going to happen in a period of three to five weeks where everybody will be receiving their carts. After they get their cart, and after we’re finished deploying all the carts, we will start the collection for residents.”

In addition to the MRF, a new educational building has also been added at the Waste and Recycling Centre.

This building itself is recycled as it was previously the temporary location of the Helen Schuler Nature Centre during renovations to the permanent facility, and the deck surrounding the building is also made of recycled material.

The City’s current recycling stations collect plastics that are purchased by a Southern Alberta company to create decking material.

Once the program is ready for rollout, another change will be bi-weekly garbage service.

Sanchez explains that when they do the city-wide implementation, residents are going to have an alternating week collection system.

“One week will be recyclables, one week will be garbage. The facility needs to be fully operational, we need to receive materials every week. We want to make sure we collect half of the city in one week, and the other half will be the following week. That’s part of the work that we have been looking at all of the details, and how to implement it.”

A launch of public education around the upcoming recycling program is anticipated early in the New Year, and Spearman says since they’re not the first city to have curbside recycling they can learn from the experience of other municipalities.

“Community education is a big part of success and getting clear messages out to citizens is important to make sure we get the right products put into the bins. I think we’ve got the right staff to inform people, and we’ll be spending a lot of time on the programs to make sure people fully understand them.

“To have contamination rates of 15 percent and less in the trial is very encouraging, I think those are very low rates. People have to understand that not everything can be recycled, and we will be screening some things out. People may have some expectations that they can recycle certain things, and that may not be the case, but it’s important to communicate well,” Spearman stated.

Residents can expect their blue carts to arrive in the spring of 2019.

by Aaron Mahoney (@Mahones93 on Twitter)

Preparations for curbside recycling on track for spring 2019

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