Black and blue cart collection starts next week

Kelly Kloss, Director of Development Services for the City of Red Deer says the new system is an important part of the City’s Environmental Master Plan.

“It’s all about being kinder to our environment and diverting waste from our landfill to extend the life of it,” he explains. “The big issue around it is the development of gases that are toxic and when we take the organics out, that really reduces what will come out of the landfill, so environmentally, it’s a really big initiative.”

Collection for the Blue and Black Cart will take place every other week, on alternating weeks, meaning garbage will be collected one week and recycling the next week. Green Cart collection remains weekly.

“A lot of our garbage can actually go to the organic and can be composted,” Kloss notes. “So every week as you have table scraps, we’re trying to get them out of the household and composted as fast as possible. As you use the composting, you normally will reduce the amount of garbage you have, so every second week works.”

A notable change starting next week requires residents to no longer include glass with their recycling.

“It can contaminate the rest of the recycling,” says Kloss. “As far as cost or getting money back from glass, that’s very low, if any. The other aspect is it does not emit greenhouse gas emissions, so when it goes to landfill, it just becomes crushed and just part of room and many other communities are also moving in that direction.”

While some communities in Canada are struggling with their recycling programs and finding companies able to take it off their hands, Kloss says Waste Management has its own separate contracts to look after what they collect from Red Deerians.

“Our expectation of Waste Management is to find those contracts so this can be useable and sent out, so that’s their responsibility as part of the contracts,” explains Kloss. “If they’re having challenges with that, then they’ll talk to us. At this point, we’re not having the challenges that some other communities may be experiencing.”

Mayor Tara Veer says after implementing the Green Cart system last year, rolling out the Blue and Black Carts this year completes Red Deer’s cart program implementation.

“I think it’s important to note that a part of the program was extending what was eligible in terms of recyclables in Red Deer,” adds Veer. “Going to a three-cart system brings operational efficiency and financial efficiency into our waste management service as well.”

Veer says best practices in waste, recycling and compost collection were all looked into prior to the City introducing the three-cart system to residents.

“Even by the time we reached a point where we were implementing the system, there was a lot of learning which had occurred from other communities,” recalls Veer. “And we fully expect that there may be challenges or new learnings that arise when we go to the full three-cart model next week and we’ll be responsive to those changes as necessary in the coming weeks and months.”

From an environmental perspective, Veer says last year alone, the Green Cart system helped divert 27 per cent of waste that would have gone to the City’s landfill and rerouted to organics.

“For three months last year, we actually collected more on the organics system than we did on an actual garbage collection,” she exclaims. “That is a very critical and important fact for Red Deerians because Red Deerians participation means that our existing landfill, the life of that existing landfill, they’re very expensive to build, there’s substantial environmental rigors that are necessary on landfills. But the longer the life of that landfill, the better it is for Red Deerians in the long run.”

For more details on Red Deer’s new three-cart collection system, visit www.reddeer.ca/carts.

by Sheldon Spackman

Black and blue cart collection starts next week

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