The Tuesday, June 13th, council meeting in Renfrew left a lot of questions about recycling collection moving forward.
The province is moving to a new model that takes the responsibility of collecting residential recycling out of the hands of municipalities and puts it onto the producers, which will be handled locally by Circular Materials Ontario when the new model goes into effect on July 28th.
Speaking at the meeting, Renfrew’s Environmental Officer, Amanda Springer, explained that this means they will need to figure out the next three years of collection at hundreds of local non-eligible sources such as businesses, institutions, and industrial sites.
At the meeting, Council would approve a deal with CMO’s preferred subcontractor, Topps Environment Services, to handle collection from both eligible and non-eligible sources.
However, Director of Strategic Asset Management Mike Asselin would point out that there are still many questions that Topps has not made themselves available to answer.
Also on the list of concerns from the town are a likely increase in administrative and auditing fees, whether the quality of service will remain the same at non-eligible sources, and if an increase in stops due to growth within the town would affect the deal in the future.
The remaining questions have left Reeve Peter Emon unsure whether the provincial government has the stamina or spine to make sure the producers hold up their end of the bargain.
Emon, who is also the Warden for Renfrew County, added that they “will be pressing the government to make sure the producers live up to their responsibility,” that they keep the same content going into each recycling box, and to make sure municipalities are made whole in the deal.
(written by Kasey Egan)
