Plans for curbside recycling in Prince George remain on hold as the province continues to sort out new recycling regulations.
Monday marked the deadline for the producers of packaging and printed paper (PPP) materials to submit a stewardship plan to the Ministry of the Environment detailing how they will finance and manage the recycling of their products.
Multi-Material British Columbia (MMBC) - formed with the intention of becoming a stewardship agency for PPP producers - compiled a draft plan for submission on which members of the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George administration provided feedback.
The draft plan submitted by stakeholders covers the stewardship of materials including newspapers, office paper, telephone books, milk jugs, aluminum and steel cans, glass containers, cardboard and plastic bags.
A program is supposed to be in place by May 2014.
That means it will be at least that long before any sort of expanded recycling program is seen in Prince George, which, according to a report by MMBC, is amongst the 18 per cent of the province's households without access to local government-provided curbside recycling pickup.
In the final report for the core services review, KPMG saw the implementation of curbside recycling as a savings opportunity (between $150,000 to $250,000 per year) as it could allow for the collection of regular garbage to be moved to pick up once every two weeks during the winter.
"This is the first city I've seen in a lot of years being involved in this that doesn't have a door-to-door recycling program and sooner or later you're going to have to get there," said KPMG core services review leader Brian Bourns during a Nov. 2 meeting with the select committee on core services review.
Coun. Murry Krause called the suggestion "not well founded."
Though the consultants recommended initiating discussions with the regional district on the topic, these discussions have already been ongoing for years.
"We would have had one if not for the changes in legislation with the province," he explained.
The wait and uncertainty is "frustrating for everybody," said RDFFG spokesperson Renee McCloskey. "It was really exciting when the province put the responsibility on the producers - that's a pretty significant responsibility shift that you're not seeing happening in a lot of other jurisdictions."
The level of support for curbside recycling was very high locally when the 2011 announcement of the changes to the Recycling Regulations - which coincided with the completion of the regional district's plan to enhance waste diversion - meant the organization was at a standstill until the new legislation is sorted out.
"Right now it's completely up in the air," said McCloskey.
"Because the majority of what would be collected in curbside recycling is the paper and packaging materials, it didn't make a lot of sense to go forward and invest in the startup and building of a curbside recycling program if the responsibility for collecting the majority of the materials that would be gathered was going to be put onto a third party," she said. "So why would you invest however many millions of dollars in tax funding when in two years time, other people are going to have the responsibility to do it?"
The draft stewardship plan proposes a 75 per cent recovery rate of recyclables from landfill, which would increase from the estimated rate of between 50 and 57 per cent.
"At the outset, MMBC will largely assume responsibility for the existing B.C. PPP collection and recycling system and will set conditions for future improvements in effectiveness and efficiency of PPP recovery in B.C.," the draft plans says.
In the case of an area like Prince George where there isn't already a residential collection service, MMBC proposes issuing a tender for collection services and they will select the service provider, provide public education as well as promotion and management of service to customers. They will also offer incentives to operate depots for recycling to either local governments or private companies.
The MMBC plan also outlines plans for a packaging redesign, to reduce the amount of materials that would actually make it to the consumer and need to be recycled.
The regional district board of directors endorsed a policy paper on the issue put out by the Union of B.C. Municipalities back in September and the regional district's general manager of environmental services, Petra Wildauer, also sits on the UBCM's packaging and printed paper working group.
In a letter to MMBC, district administrator Jim Martin said they appreciated that recommendations in the policy paper were taken into account for the draft plan, but that it was "too vague on details for implementation which creates uncertainty in how the plan will be implemented in both our rural and urban communities."
While it's easy enough for Prince George residents to have access to drop-off containers for items under stewardship programs like tires or electronics, that access isn't there in smaller communities, explained McCloskey.
"[The new plan] can't be centered in large, urban communities. If the product is available to purchase in a community, there should be access to take that product back for recycling and stewardship," she said.
