| Despite the fact that Calgary is the only major city in Canada without an effective waste management program, our city’s proposed curbside recycling and compost program has been sent back to administration for further review – putting us further away from dealing with our wasteful ways.
Council, at the direction of Mayor Dave Bronconnier, has put the entire plan back to administration to come up with a more economical option — which may result in curbside being axed. This, despite the fact that the city’s proposed program is competitive with other programs in major cities across Canada and is more cost-effective than private curbside operators in Calgary.
Currently the city is diverting less than 20 per cent of waste, compared to other cities that are able to divert anywhere from 40 per cent or more. In a city of one million, the current 50 recycling depots are simply inadequate. According to the city, the depot program can only divert about 15 per cent of waste at best.
Dave Griffiths, director of waste and recycling services, says the depots are handling 40 to 50 per cent higher volumes than what they were designed for. This is creating stress and Griffiths says the welcome is wearing out at the lots where the depots are situated. Recently, the Woodbine recycling depot was removed after the Safeway where the depot was located asked for its permanent removal. Without another suitable location, area residents have been left without convenient access to a recycling depot.
Where depots are available, residents frequently complain they are full beyond capacity. Another weakness of the depot system is that it is unable to accept yard and kitchen waste — such organics comprise 40 per cent of the average household’s waste and are the city’s number-one generator of greenhouse gases. This material cannot break down in a landfill environment and instead creates harmful methane gas.
Still though, some Calgarians accustomed to using backyard composters and the depot system or one of a dozen or so private curbside pickup companies are angry about the proposed $21 per month fee per household. Others are happy to landfill all of their waste and don’t want to pay anything for a curbside program.
Brian Pincott of the Sierra Club Chinook Group is disappointed in the way some in the media have misrepresented the costs of the program. "It’s been inflammatory. They’re not comparing apples to apples. When they talk about the full price of the program they’ve lumped in garbage collection and said ‘this is what we’re going to pay to recycle.’ It’s purely because the bigger the number the bigger the reaction you’re going to get from the public."
The $21 per house per month fee breaks down to $8 for garbage collection and disposal and $13 for collection and processing of recyclables and organics (kitchen and yard waste). Private operators, meanwhile, are charging an average $11 to $12 just for recyclables or $21 for recyclables and organics — neither of these costs includes garbage collection and disposal. Clearly, the city’s program is more cost-effective.
Regardless, controversy has flourished with claims that private operators can do a more efficient job. Alderman Ric McIver and Alderman Diane Colley-Urquhart have requested a costly plebiscite on the issue, claiming the program is too expensive. Alderman McIver has taken his stance one step further stating he wants any kind of recycling program to be put to a plebiscite, feeling that any increase to costs is too much.
Pincott argues that private operators aren’t an effective alternative, "they’ve been around for 10 years and have only been able to capture three per cent of the market — this tells me we need the city to do it." He believes bylaws are needed and enforcement behind an effective program and that fundamentally, waste management is a city responsibility. With such a botched job in communicating the costs and benefits of the program, he questions whether the city really wants this program to be a success. "The cynic in me questions whether they wanted a curbside program to succeed. The pessimist in me thinks they just screwed up their messaging — it’s hard to find the positive in why they’ve positioned it this way."
Indeed, many have questioned why the costs have been positioned as a user fee. Griffiths is the first to take responsibility for the bunged-up messaging, but is adamant that his department is committed to the program, contending, "We may have missed the mark and the message may have been lost, but it wasn’t by design."
He says his department has been searching for a new and more sustainable way to fund waste diversion for years. He wants to move away from funding diversion through landfill tipping fees, saying, "You can’t depend on money from waste to fund getting rid of it." He also feels the proposed user fee would more accurately reflect waste management costs per household, "Increasing taxes would impact people on different levels depending on the value of their property, which distorts the value each household receives."
The user fee would also finally give the department a link to growth. Every household would pay its share of the program as soon as a home is built or a new family establishes itself — a real issue in our ever-expanding city. The new user fee would also result in an estimated $18.5M in reduced tax requirement by waste and recycling services — something nobody in the media has picked up.
After a successful 2004 pilot program testing curbside recycling and composting and a 2005 vote by council conclusively giving the green light to clean up our ways, the program has been put on the chopping block. Pincott sizes it all up by concluding, "Curbside is the most basic thing that a city can do for the environment — it’s embarrassing enough that we don’t already have curbside — if the recycling program council has already committed to goes up in flames, we’ll be the environmental joke of this country." |
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