Powell River Regional District (PRRD) is working to address a gap in recycling services provided to businesses in Powell River. The district’s Let’s Talk Trash Team, along with regional district staff, have begun a three-month audit of commercial recycling at the Westview depot.
“We’d heard from local businesses that the current system isn’t working,” said Tai Uhlmann, team member of Let’s Talk Trash. “We saw a gap that needed to be filled, and we talked with Multi-Material BC and their service provider, Green by Nature, who take all the recycled materials.”
Uhlmann said for the next three months businesses are being asked to bring their recycling to the depot near Rona Building Centre.
“The businesses just need to sort their materials the same way they sort their residential materials,” said Uhlmann. “It’s essentially the same as how people are doing their residential recycling, but before the recycling depot only received residential recycling. If a business had shown up with a large quantity of recyclable items that made it clear they were from commercial rather than residential, it wouldn’t have been allowed.”
According to Uhlmann, when the regional district signed on with Multi-Material BC in May 2014, the focus was on providing residential services, but they had offered to include commercial at a rate of 25 per cent of the total materials being deposited by the community.
“We asked if we could conduct a three-month audit to see what the percentage the commercial recycling would actually be, instead of paying the 25 per cent if we only really have 10 or eight per cent,” she said. “Once we’ve done the audit, and if we decide to move forward, we would only pay that percentage we calculate from the audit, which would be more cost effective.”
Mike Wall, PRRD manager of community services, agreed the audit may prove that the percentage is actually lower, which will save the regional district money on its solid-waste management budget, should they choose to add institutional, commercial and industrial (ICI) printed paper and packaging materials to the recycling depot.
“Multi-Material BC has worked with the regional district to set up the audit process at the town depot in order to avoid cross contamination of the streams and to accurately determine what percentage of the printed paper and packaging stream the ICI sector will produce,” said Wall.
Currently, private companies Sunshine Disposal and Recycling and Ecoterra have been dealing with some recyclable products from businesses, and Uhlmann said if people are comfortable using them for items like paper, cardboard, number-two plastics and metal, they should continue doing so.
“If people still want to give their paper and metals to local business, then we want to encourage that,” said Uhlmann.
Wall said once the audit at the Westview depot is complete, the data will be presented with a recommendation to the regional district board.
