by Morinville News Staff with files from Colin Smith
All glass jars, non-refundable bottles, and other glass containers are now to be placed in the waste cart. Glass is among a number of former recyclables that are no longer recyclable with the passing of third reading of the Town of Morinville’s Waste Management Rate Bylaw.
St. Albert took a similar approach earlier this year due to their being no market for glass recyclables.
Film plastics, including plastic store bags, can be disposed of at Sobeys stores but continue to be non-permitted recyclables for weekly collection.
Non-recyclable plastics are to be disposed of in the waste cart. The only accepted plastics are molded, rigid plastic containers and tubs with lids grade 1 & 2 only. These must be rinsed.
Styrofoam continues to be a non-recyclable and is to be disposed of in the waste cart.
Also added to the bylaw as non-permitted organic material is cannabis by-products (stems).
The province needs to step up on recycling
A month prior to third reading, Morinville councillors embraced efforts to have producers take more responsibility for the recycling of their products.
At its October 23 meeting Town Council considered a letter from the Edmonton Region Waste Advisory Committee seeking its support for the establishment of an extended producer responsibility and policy and program approach in Alberta.
The concept of extended producer responsibility is that the producer of a product is responsible for that product through the post-consumer stage of its life cycle.
The aim is to shift the responsibilities and costs of recycling from municipalities to producers, which provides producers with an increased incentive to reduce product and packaging waste and create products that are readily reusable or recyclable.
According to the Waste Advisory Committee, in 2009 all Canada’s provinces committed to developing extended producer responsibility programs and everyone except Alberta has since done so.
Council voted unanimously to include the key messages on extended producer responsibility outlined by the committee in its advocacy plans for the year. A subsequent motion proposed to write to the Minister of Environment about the issue also passed unanimously.
Not sure why we pay for recycling when most things are non-recyclable now….that is just a rip off!
There better be an updated list of what can, and cant be recycled mailed out.
This just makes life more confusing. You want people too recycle but make it difficult to do so…
Eric MacGregor
It’s Christmas time, where businesses and town councils are hard up for money!
Rates go up, the variety of recyclables accepted decreases, and out garbage bins have gotten smaller all in the last year. Am I missing something here?
That’s beyond ridiculous!! You want to save the planet? Recycle, and stop making so many flipping excuses! Or, pardon, me, is not saving the planet not that important after all, and all we’ve been doing is posturing this whole dang time??? We the common people can’t keep up with your expensive stupidity.
Burn barrels work great.
Krystal
It’s why I never use recycle. It’s so much easier on the brain ?
Luc Aubuchon same here everything goes right into the waste bin
Fuck it. I’ll just throw it all in the dump….
Wow
Megan Greenley
Just seen you commented on a different post but the same post?!
Daana Allen how the fuck does this make sense. I mean I get it, but now our bins are going to be over flowing with shit.
Is there any way we can hire our own garbage disposal people, and not have to go through the towns contract? This is getting ridiculous.
Daana Allen they’re raising the waste bill by $5
I don’t think you can. I try and recycle everything but this makes it harder to save the planet?!
Daana Allen exactly. This is irritating as hell.
How do they figure glass isn’t recyclable?? Makes no sense at all. You can take smelly gross nasty beer bottles to the depot by the dozens but a cleaned out jar is no longer acceptable? How incredibly wasteful. Shameful.
Can’t recycle glass in fort mac either . Just beer bottles if you go to the depot .
Is there not one person on Town Council who can explain why glass is no longer recyclable considering we have been recycling it for years. Or is this just another sad political decision?
What a joke.
The article it touches on the fact that there is no market to sell the product after it hits the recycling depot. The depot cannot sell it, they cant store it, and it ends up in the garbage anyway. Also, if the glass is broken, it cannot be recycled either, and ends up in a landfill. (hence having to separate out glass from the blue bag recently) If the depot refuses to accept it, we cannot collect it, that choice is not ours.
Film plastics (grocery bags) have no market and have never been recyclable through the depot. The plastic is too thin and cannot be processed for recycling into other products. They have never wanted to deter people from recycling so never made a big deal about it being in the bags, but it too, ends up in landfills.
China is our biggest buyer of recyclable material and they are not buying what we have to sell.
There are many plastics that cannot be recycled, like laminated containers (tide pods, peanut butter containers, ketchup containers…). Its a kick in the teeth to anyone who takes the time to wash, clean and recycle these items. I just found out about these realities myself and was angry.
It’s not the towns fault, it’s not the recycling depo’s fault, it’s not the government’s fault. It’s the manufacturers fault.
Council has joined the push for extended producer responsibility, which means quite simply, that we are fighting to hold the manufactures of products responsible for packaging products in recyclable containers.
I hope this answers your questions. Council does care and we are taking steps to do what is in our power to create change where we can.
Colleen Moskalyk
Sarah Hall thank you, I wasn’t blaming Council I just thought you guys would know all the details. The manufacturers need to use less packaging that’s pretty much the problem.
Colleen Moskalyk, they need to use packaging that is recyclable.
I understand years ago they use to crush it and mix it with asphalt ??