Airdrie City council approved moving forward with blue box curbside recycling at its meeting on Sept. 21.
What isn’t so clear is when residents can expect to see blue carts showing up on their street. The motion, made by Alderman Ron Chapman, directs City of Airdrie staff to “return to council with details about that program taking into account the contractors and investigating the ways we might incorporate them into the program.”
Deputy Mayor Candice Kolson said she felt council needed to move ahead with approving the introduction of curbside recycling.
“We need to move this forward. Seventy per cent of our residents captured in different forms of surveys and public consultation asked for this,” she said in voting for the motion.
Alderman Allan Hunter voted against the motion, saying he was not prepared to make the decision hastily and based only on what residents who participated in the public consultation wanted.
“I know for a fact what’s going to happen. Just like the curbside recycling, all the people who didn’t participate in the survey, they’re going to be contacting us and telling us all the reasons it’s terrible and horrible and the sky is falling and all those things,” he said.
Council’s decision came after nearly two hours of presentations by Waste and Recycling department staff and consultants, outlining the results of public consultation, which took place throughout 2014 and into 2015.
According to information presented by Lorne Stevens, director of Community Infrastructure and Kathleen Muretti, manager of Waste and Recycling Services, more than 6,000 residents were consulted via a variety of methods including an online and telephone survey, focus groups, open houses and a booth at the 2015 Home and Lifestyle Show.
Results of the survey, conducted in November 2014, were presented to council in January. When asked if they would be willing to pay for curbside recycling, 35 per cent of those surveyed by phone and 76 per cent of those completing the online survey said they were extremely supportive of the implementation of curbside recycling and of those, 45 per cent (phone) and 60 per cent (online) said they’d be willing to pay a waste management fee for the service.
The existing East Side Recycling Depot is at capacity and will be unable to cope should Airdrie’s population continue to increase, Muretti said. The depot was built in 1992 for a population of 13,000.
Waste from Airdrie is disposed of in the City of Calgary’s landfills, which has a basic sanitary rate for residential garbage and approximately 100 items on a designated materials list.
“If you have an item in your waste that is on the designated materials list, then you pay a higher rate. It’s to discourage people from putting those things in their waste. It’s intended to be a penalty,” Muretti said.
She said the step up from designated items is banning them and added in 2018 paper and cardboard will be added to the banned list, followed by organics in 2019.
Muretti said staff was able to negotiate an agreement for a waiver that allows the City to still pay the basic sanitary rate for these items while they are on the designated materials list, “As long as we were continuing our efforts towards having recyclables removed from the waste stream.”
The disposal fee for basic residential waste is going up from $110 per tonne to $113 per tonne in 2016.
Scott Gamble of ch2m Consulting provided information about the costs involved in moving away from the status quo.
The capital cost to add an additional deport and introduce blue bin curbside recycling is $2,037,275 with operating costs of $2,239,522 (2017).
Carolyne Christie, owner of Kick it to the Curb which provides curbside recycling to more than 2,000 customers in Airdrie, said she was “a little shell shocked” by council’s decision.
“I’m not entirely sure what this means for us. I think the decision was unconscionable,” she said. “Having said that I understand council’s decision. They claim they have a majority (of residents) wanting it and they were elected to do what their constituents want them to do.”
Christie said City staff had been in touch with her up until Sept. 21.
“None of their documents or presentation reflected in any way, shape or form what they’ve consulted with me on. Nothing that we’ve talked about, none of the options I’d presented to council or to the (Environmental Advisory) Board that would allow them to not put the rest of us out of business was brought up or considered.”
Christie said she is operating “business as usual” for now, saying she recognizes the actual implementation of a curbside recycling program by the City could take months or even years.
