County News
A bin of a different colour
Council considers a grey box for paper recycling
Not everything in your blue bin is created— or recycled—equally. Glass, for example, is heavy and uses more energy and resources to recycle than creating new. Most plastics are now recyclable—but it is often hard to find a profitable market.
Paper and cardboard are the shining exceptions. These materials are the poster product for recycling. Literally. There are ready and profitable markets for recycled paper in North America. But not all is rosy in the paper recycling markets—demand is lower due to a confluence of factors. Chief among them is that we do a poor job of sorting paper from the remainder of the items in the blue bin. This means more sorting at the processing plant, which costs more. Paper is also much more likely to be contaminated by an unwashed yogourt container, pop can or other material in the blue bin.
It is why some municipalities are introducing a grey bin addition to the recycling routine. The grey bin collects only paper and cardboard. In Kingston, the grey box may include newspapers, cereal boxes, hardcover books and milk cartons. These are collected weekly alongside both the blue box and green bin (compost).
The County is currently considering its own grey box recycling program with Quinte Waste Solutions. To do this, recycling pickup would occur weekly throughout the year—with grey boxes picked up one week, blue on alternating weeks. Extending weekly recycling pickup in this way is expected to cost about $75,000 more per year.
The total cost of purchasing grey bins, marketing and roll out is estimated at $185,000—with half the funding from the QWS board and half from the federal Community Improvement Fund.
Councillor Barry Turpin represents the County on the Quinte Waste Solutions board. He brought the proposal to a council committee meeting last week for discussion. He explained that advantages include reducing the cost of sorting and lessening the risk of contamination. He added that the goal was to improve the quality and profitability of this waste stream.
He suggests these advantages may offset the cost of extending weekly recycling year round.
The notion met with skepticism around the council table.
Mayor Robert Quaiff worried an additional colour to the recycling process would be confusing and consume more space in the garage.
“Green, blue and now grey? How many more colours can you get?” said Quaiff. “It becomes a bit of an inconvenience when you have that many bins to look after on a weekly basis and where to store them.”
Councillor David Harrison worried the additional cost would be borne by ratepayers but the advantages would accrue to the recycling processor.
Athol councillor Jamie Forrester couldn’t see any advantage or rationale for the grey bins for rural users. He does, however, want to see the current waste management system dismantled and reassembled.
Specifically, Forrester believes County residents negligently put out too much garbage and should be compelled to recycle more. He explained to his colleagues that he gets up at 6:30 on Thursday morning to ensure his recycling is sorted and put out properly. He doesn’t like it, but he does it. He wishes others did the same.
“It’s time we got nasty about this,” suggested Forrester. “There is no need for any household in Prince Edward County to put out more than one garbage bag a week. If the first bag tag is $3 maybe the second and third tag should be five, six or seven dollars. We should start forcing people not to put out two or three bags of garbage. I want to look at the bigger picture. If we tell garbage collectors not to pick up bags with recycling in them—people would change in a hurry. Believe me.”
But Hallowell councillor Brad Nieman had a different take. He’s had experience with the grey box program in Loyalist Township, where, he says, it works quite well.
Everything costs money. Money that many people can’t afford in the county, another coloured recycle box another $75,000 plus, extra money on our tax bill never mind the moneys needed for road repair or the water system and increases due to other necessities. Note to councillors, there are only a limited number of sources of taxes, population – approx 25,000, business – primarily small and seasonal: we are not a large metropolitan area with infinite yearly growth. It may be instructive for our member’s of council to read the Planning report that states the largest population in PEC is projected [is] seniors, or in other words limited income earners. I would humbly recommend that those that sit on council begin to realize that money does not grow on tree or in vineyards and take into account what your constituents can afford by way of increases in the yearly tax bill, $5.00 here and there quickly add up.
The proposed addition of the grey bin is great news and it is going to make sorting at the curb and at the recycling centre easier for sure. For the householder, we are going to have another bin to use to organize and store our recyclables until pick-up day. Providing that we have adequate space, this is a good thing.
The County is a very spread out area and proposing to go from bi-weekly to weekly collection seems strange. Whatever frequency is decided however, weekly or bi-weekly collection, splitting collection of the blue bin one week and grey bin the other week will, in my humble opinion, drastically reduce capture rate and participation. The recycling trucks have compartments and are designed to pick-up all recyclables with each pass. Why make recycling more confusing than it already is?
Getting the word out about what can and cannot go into recycle bins would be helpful to increase public awareness and capture rate of recyclables.
I wonder where the photo came from that was used with the article. The milk carton (which is paper) in the wrong bin. It be in the “grey” bin?