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Three yellow bin depots moving June 1
Three community yellow bin depots will soon be removed in Sparwood and Elkford as changes in the way residential recycling is handled aim to shift more recyclables into the Recycle BC system.
“The provincially-regulated Recycle BC program is changing the way we manage our residential recycling. It not only provides more options for residents, it provides guaranteed markets at a time when smaller, independent programs are struggling to find markets and experiencing unprecedented high costs when they do,” explained Regional District of East Kootenay (RDEK) Environmental Services Manager Kevin Paterson. “Recycle BC is only for residential recycling, so the yellow bin program remains in place at businesses, schools, and in our rural areas; however, we are moving away from having collections of yellow bins – known as community depots – in our municipalities in order to encourage those recyclables to be taken to the Recycle BC Depot.”
The Recycle BC program accepts more than 76 additional recyclables than the yellow bins, and it pays the RDEK over $125/tonne for every tonne collected in the program. The public can recycle far less in the yellow bins and its costs taxpayers an average of $325/tonne for every tonne collected. That is a total difference of $450/tonne.
With a more robust, cost effective option for residents, the Elk Valley Directors have directed staff to remove the community depots and provide additional education around the Recycle BC program to help support the public’s transition to the new system. “We’ve had the yellow bin system for over 20 years with very few changes in that time, so we recognize this is a change for people. To help with the transition, we will have staff at the yellow bin community depots over the next few weeks sharing information and answering questions before the bins are removed,” added Paterson.
The community depot locations that are being removed June 1 include:
Elkford: Fording River Road Depot;
Sparwood: Sparwood Heights Baseball Field and Englemann Spruce Drive.
The Yellow Bins will remain in place for local businesses and schools; this change only affects the community depots at the above noted locations.
Recycle BC Depots in the Elk Valley, they are located at the Fernie, Elkford and Sparwood Transfer Stations.
The hours of the Elkford Transfer Station have also been expanded to increase access for the public to the site.
e-KNOW file photo
RDEK
