CARSTAIRS -- After years of being accepted into the recycling program, glass is now no longer taken in Carstairs through the blue bin curbside pickup, say officials.
The town's recycle provider is Can Pak Environmental, which picks up recycling every Friday on a biweekly rotation using blue bin pickup at the curb.
Once the recycling is picked up it is taken to a sorting facility in Red Deer.
Can Pak was recently acquired by Environmental 360 Solutions, a Toronto-based company whose owners include former Edmonton Oiler star Paul Coffey.
Carstairs also has recycling bins located at the community recycling centre by the public works shop through the town's partnership with Mountain View waste.
"There is no one taking glass anymore," said Carl McDonnell, CAO of Carstairs. "So glass has gone from being recyclable to going in your regular garbage."
Holly Schell, operations manager for Environmental 360 Solutions, said that they've received several calls recently from media outlets about the recycling issue.
"It's because everything has changed so drastically in the recycling market," said Schell. "We're basically going backwards instead of forwards in what we can recycle and what has to go to the landfill. It's become kind of a big issue, you could say."
Environmental 360 Solutions has the residential recycling contract for Didsbury, Carstairs and Cremona.
"We pick up the recycling," she said. "It goes into our trucks and gets taken to our MRF (Material Recycling Facility) at Blind Man Industrial Park (near Red Deer). The trucks get dumped, we load up some equipment and then drop it into a sorter; it then gets screened out. There is a trommel (screen or sieve) that goes around. Anything smaller than an inch gets put down and put into garbage."
From there, the remainder goes into a sorting line where approximately 10 people go through it and sort out the garbage, cardboard, plastic and so on, said Schell.
"Plastic is actually no longer recyclable," she said. "It goes straight to the landfill, as well as glass. Basically anything other than, like, milk jugs. China has shut their doors down to accepting that kind of product so there is nowhere for that product to go."
Schell said they actually had 18 months of buildup which all ended up having to go to the landfill.
"It's so unfortunate," she said. "It's just where we're at right now. We're at a time where we're taking steps backward. There's just no market for it anymore. We're just losing money hand over foot. It's costing communities a lot more money than before to have a blue box program because of the amount that is going to the landfill."
Schell said that councils she's spoken to and people who have toured MRF are surprised that this is happening.
"It's unfortunate there are so many recycling facilities going out of business because commodity prices are so low," she said. "People aren't accepting what they used to. You have to put such high-grade in for those places that are still accepting it."
Schell said they still have purchasers for cardboard and paper but basically not a lot is left that can be recycled.
"There are a lot of people out there who do take recycling seriously because they want to save the world," she said. "They want to cut back on landfill. They don't want that stuff out there. But if they put it in there we have to take it out and throw it in the landfill."
