The Town of Okotoks’s Curb It recycling program recently gained a lot more subscribers.
As of Nov. 30, Recycle This, a private curbside recycling pickup company based out of High River, stopped their residential operations in Okotoks.
Chad Lambourn, owner of Recycle This, said the company had to cease their Okotoks operations after a recent string of bad events involving a serious accident during a snowstorm that injured an employee and totaled one of their trucks.
Lambourn said regardless of the accident the decision to pull out of Okotoks was inevitable as the company hasn’t experienced much growth since Okotoks’ Curb It program was launched in September 2009.
“We lost about 200 customers this past year,” he said, adding the company had about 675 customers in Okotoks.
“What hurts the most for us is that we had so many great supporters in Okotoks,” Lambourn added.
Since then, Okotoks’ Curb It program gained more than 200 new subscribers, bringing the total number of subscribers to 1,430 as of Dec. 10, said sustainability co-ordinator Dawn Smith.
Smith said the month of November saw a large increase in subscribers in anticipation of Recycle This ceasing its Okotoks operations. This November, there were 164 additional subscribers compared to 30 new subscribers in November 2009. From Dec. 1 to Dec. 10, there were an additional 100 new Curb It subscribers, Smith said.
“Our curbside program is even more popular,” Smith said. “Unfortunately, a lot of that increase is due to the fact that Recycle This is no longer able to serve Okotoks.”
This year’s final waste and recycling statistics are still being tallied, Smith said. However, the trend so far does show a decrease in the amount of waste going to the landfill compared to last year.
Smith said Okotoks has reduced its total landfill waste by between 180 to 200 tonnes. As a result of that decrease in landfill waste, Smith said she expects to see an increase in the amount of recycling tonnage compared to last year.
The Town of Okotoks launched the Curb It program in September 2009. It is a subscription-based service where users pay $9 per month to have their recycling picked up on their curb. In exchange, they get two 69-litre bins, one red and one blue.
The blue bins are used for recycling newspaper, magazines, office paper, mixed paper, cardboard and paper coffee cups, while the red bins are for clear and coloured glass, tin, metal, some plastic and recyclable bottles, cans and tetrapaks.
Before the Curb It program was launched, Okotoks residents either had to sort and take their recyclables to the Town’s recycling depot or have it picked up by a private recycling company.
With Curb It, Smith said there is no reason for residents to throw recyclables into the garbage.
“The concept is, if you don’t want to drive to the recycling depot, you have the option of it being collected for about $2 a week, which is pretty affordable,” she said.
While most municipalities in Canada offer mandatory curbside recycling pickup, the Curb It program is optional.
“We didn’t want it to be mandatory, which is quite rare,” Smith said. “We’re probably one of very few in the country who actually have a subscription service. Most municipalities say this is just the way it is and you’re going to pay for it.”
Smith said the Town wanted to keep the service optional in order to allow Okotoks residents to decide for themselves how they would like to handle their recycling.
“People are really active recyclers here in Okotoks, even before we had the Curb It program,” she explained. “We wanted to make it optional, so if you still wanted to do it yourself, you can.
“We also didn’t want to put private recycling pickup companies out of business,” Smith added.
Gail Giroux, a resident of Hunters Place in Okotoks, has been a Curb It subscriber since the program was launched. Before that, she took her recyclables to the recycling depot herself.
Giroux said she is a strong supporter of the Curb It program and the hassle-free recycling option it provides to residents.
“It boils down to convenience,” Giroux said. “I think it encourages you to recycle almost everything. It’s less hassle, and it’s always right at your fingertips.”
Giroux said she has had no problems with the Curb It program.
“They’re right on time every week, and it’s worked out really well for us,” she said.
While there are not any rules against throwing recyclables into the garbage, Smith said she doesn’t think many Okotoks residents do that due to the garbage limit per household.
According to the bylaw, each household is limited to two units of garbage per pickup. A unit is considered to be one regular sized garbage bag not weighing more than 14 kilograms or one garbage can that holds a maximum of 100 litres.
“Obviously, if the Curb It program wasn’t successful and our tonnage wasn’t decreasing, we would probably look at going with a mandatory program,” Smith said. “But we haven’t needed to.”
At the moment, the Curb It program does not offer recycling pickup to residents living in apartment or condo buildings, Smith said, but that could change in the near future.
“(When that decision was made), council agreed to leave that to the private industry at the time, but in the near future we may be looking at offering some sort of recycling service (for apartment and condo buildings),” Smith said.
She added the Town may launch a pilot project for apartment and condo recycling pickup in 2011.
In the meantime, Smith issued a friendly reminder for Okotoks residents around the Christmas holidays not to pile their recycling bins too high with cardboard and paper.
“We would like people to either take their cardboard and Christmas paper down to the recycling depot, or to store it until the next week to maximize their bin space,” Smith said, explaining the Town cannot collect that much cardboard and paper at once.
Smith also reminded residents they can recycle their Christmas trees once the holidays are over. The Curb It program will be picking up trees at the end of January, she said. Details will be announced closer to the time.
