By Blair Braitenbach
Staff reporter
Black Diamond and three other municipalities might be assisting Mother Nature’s green colours with a little help from a shade of blue.
At last Wednesday’s regular town council meeting, Black Diamond Coun. Tyler Bray explained a new initiative – called the Sustainable Refuse and Recycling Committee involving the towns of Black Diamond, Turner Valley, Longview and the MD of Foothills – that aims to reduce the amount of garbage dumped in the regional landfill south of Okotoks. Committee members are still only meeting voluntarily until their councils approve its terms of reference, however, after its first meeting earlier this month, they have suggested implementing a curbside blue box recycling program.
“We’ve got to stand out there and be accounted for,” Bray said. “I think that’s what we’re doing, basically coming up with a policy or program that will educate and encourage people to recycle.”
Bray explained at the current pace of dumping, the existing landfill’s life expectancy will run out by the year 2035. Bray said the provincial government is not issuing any more landfill licences, so once it fills up that is it.
Despite having existing recycling depots in Turner Valley and Okotoks, Bray said the pressure is on to get creative and find ways to extend the landfill’s life expectancy.
“Probably because we’re in a fast-paced society, people haven’t got the time to go over to Turner Valley and put the recyclables in there,” Bray said. “Well where is it going? Basically the easiest thing is ‘hey, I pay for garbage (pick-up) and it’s going in the garbage and that’s the end of it.’ That’s affecting us all.”
Representatives from the four municipalities are going to meet again on April 17 and will discuss the potential costs of a curbside recycling program. If the program takes off, Bray said it is likely they will contract an outside source to pick up the recyclables as a cost-saving measure.
“It would be cheaper to go that route for us rather than buy equipment and trucks to start doing this program. There are existing companies out there, it’s a matter of finding out what the cost associated to do this is,” Bray said.
Bray and council also discussed the idea of charging individuals less on their garbage pick-up fees if they recycle more and toss out less garbage, something the curb-side recycling program would enable the municipalities to monitor.
The City of Calgary is working to implement a curbside recycling program by 2009.
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