Starting this July, 800 residences will be chosen to participate in the town's single-stream recycling pilot project.
Each participating residence will be given a blue 96-gallon roll-out cart, in which the residents will be able to put all their recyclables. The participating residences will be serviced twice a month by the Mountain View Regional Waste Management Commission, and Waste Management.
“The proposal originated from the Mountain View Regional Waste Management Commission,” said Larry Wright, director of operations for the Town of Olds.
“Council has asked to really work with the commission and Waste Management to try to get all the costs down as much as possible during the course of the pilot, and try to bring as much efficiency as possible in the waste collection area.”
Participating residents will be asked to pay a $2 environmental fee per household.
“We had different options for how they wanted to look at the rate structure,' said Wright. “Council chose a structure of environmental levy, $2 per household, just to get this pilot and get the culture changed.”
The pilot project was born of the commission's necessity to extend the regional landfill's site lifespan.
“Alberta Environment has put a really strong constraint on future landfill development. You can image what that has done for the value of existing landfill sites and the approval process,” said Wright.
“You really need to put a high value on existing landfill space.”
The project has Town of Olds, Mountain View Regional Waste Management Commission, and Waste Management working together to shift from recycling centres to single-stream recycling bins for commercial and residential customers.
Wright says that Mountain View Regional Waste Management Commission hopes to prevent a minimum of 150 tons a year from going into the landfill with the single-stream recycling project.
“Sometimes, when you are working with bulk items like cardboard and things like that, it's not so much the weight as the mass, the space that it occupies,” said Wright.
“Part of this pilot process is we ask the waste commission to measure weight and they can look at the offsets in terms of landfill space not used. That's why we do the pilot.”
The pilot project will run for a year, from July 2012 to July 2013. If it is successful, Wright says Town of Olds is looking ahead at having a full system in place by 2014.
