A service club’s environmental initiatives this month will save high country residents a trip to the landfill.
The Foothills Lions Club is hosting a week-long Environmental Metal Roundup June 6 -13 to give residents a place to bring various metals they may have lying around or are unable to dispose.
Club members will place a bin supplied by Calgary’s ReconMetal near their club garage, which is located beside the Bob Lochhead Memorial Park Campground in Black Diamond.
The bin will be manned daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and emptied as required, according to James Lee, event organizer and Foothills Lions Club member.
“This is something that the Lions can do to help the community,” said Lee. “This is a community initiative that just makes our towns look cleaner.”
Lee said the idea came from the Lions Club’s environmental chairwoman Betty Ann Adams from the Mountainview Lions Club, who is advising clubs to cut down on waste within their organizations and communities by reducing their footprint on the environment.
“There is a small benefit to the communities in the sense that we get a minimal amount of money that we’ll be able to put back into the community through programming,” said Lee. “It keeps stuff out of the landfill.”
The roundup allows for the collection of various ferrous and non-ferrous materials ranging from bed frames to copper wire. It does not accept combustible or explosive materials, closed containers, air conditioning or refrigeration units that contain CFCs or HCFCs or any items containing mercury or radioactive materials.
Verna Staples, Black Diamond’s legislative services manager, said the Lions Club initiative is a benefit for the town and surrounding communities as the Oilfields Recycle Centre isn’t able to accept some of the materials.
“The recycling centre is somewhat limited in the metal items that it takes,” she said. “The Environmental Metal Round Up does take some appliances, which we don’t take at the recycling centre. We don’t have the capability of handling the material there and the larger items like the copper wire and brass would be not really appropriate at the recycling centre.”
Staples said the initiative makes it easier for residents to clean out any unwanted materials they’d been unable to dispose of previously.
“We have a lot of people here who are not able to take large things out of town due to their vehicle size so they don’t have someone to help them with that,” she said. “It’s easier to have someone willing to help you when it’s out of town. I’m hopeful that people will make this a successful event for the Lions Club and turn in all those metal things that they want to get rid of.”
Karen Orum, lead hand operator at the Oilfields Recycling Centre, agrees there are only certain metal items the facility can take, largely due to the size of the bin opening at the Turner Valley centre.
“If it’s too big to go into the bin we have to turn it away,” she said, adding the opening is four and a half feet wide by three feet high. “If it fits in that opening we’re good. If it doesn’t we have to turn them away and lots of times they would take it and cut it up themselves or try and fold it.”
Orum said it’s not often the centre has had to turn materials away as most people are familiar with what it can and can’t accept.
“We have hubcaps in there and we have had rebar in there and some sheeting, but it has to fit,” she said.
Orum said it’s good that residents have another venue to recycle their metals with the help of the Foothills Lions Club.
“It certainly a way to make money,” she said. “It all ends up back in the community anyway.”
For more information about the Foothills Lions Club’s Environmental Metal Roundup go to town.blackdiamond.ab.ca
