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Recycling woes

To recycle or not recycle? That is the question a group of residents asked town councillors during the town’s 2016 annual general meeting. At the time then mayor Gerry St.

To recycle or not recycle? That is the question a group of residents asked town councillors during the town’s 2016 annual general meeting.

At the time then mayor Gerry St. Pierre said they planned to ask residents through its Strategic Plan survey whether or not they would like the town’s voluntary recycling program and if so what form it should take. Something so far, to our knowledge, has not taken place.

For the record, at the time we stated that we believed the town’s recycling program was something that was worthwhile and should continue.

Not only is recycling beneficial to the environment, it also has the tangible benefit of expanding the life of the landfill as well as reducing the time and cost of garbage pickup, because in theory, staff have less to pickup.

Unfortunately, it looks like the decision of whether municipalities continue their recycling programs, could soon be taken out of our hands.

As you will read on Page 10A a recent decision by the Chinese government to no longer accept certain plastic and paper recycling imports could put a damper on municipalities efforts to continue their recycling efforts.

Municipalities around the world, including cities such as Calgary, are sitting on large stockpiles of recyclable materials, which supposedly have some sort of financial value. Nor is paper and plastics the only materials, residents and municipalities, are having an issue recycling.

Alberta CARE (coordinated action for recycling enterprises) is a non-profit organization comprised mostly of municipalities, businesses, and other non-profit community groups whose purpose is to increase the viability of recycling initiatives in the province, is concerned that Albertans will soon no longer have a place to recycle their used oil products due to lack of funding. The used oil materials recycling program is operated by Alberta Used Oil Management Association (AUOMA), a not-for-profit created by provincial legislation in 1997 to facilitate the responsible collection and recycling of used oil materials in Alberta.

How the program works is that sites that collect the oil products are paid a fee, which comes from an environmental levy that is charged on various products through an environmental handling charge.

However, the fee hasn’t been increased even though the costs of handling recycling the product have and as a result more and more oil recycling depots are closing.

It is a concern Woodlands County Coun. Dale McQueen shares stating in February of last year that many of the province’s locations and businesses that take used oil and its associated products are closing saying that since 2016 more than 134 collection sites have closed.

Despite the difficulties, we believe recycling is important and is something the municipality needs to continue although we don’t have an answer on how to overcome the current obstacles. Hopefully in the coming weeks our elected officials, at all levels, are able to find a solution to what soon will be a large problem.

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