Turner Valley’s recycling facility will continue accepting glass, despite a citizen’s suggestion last month to stop.
Wayne Lapaire suggested a temporary ban be placed on glass collection at the Oilfield Recycling Facility to save citizens the cost of washing and transporting it as it’s been going into the Foothills Regional Landfill and Resource Recovery Centre the past two years due to a lack of market for recycled glass.
Lapaire’s suggestion, which was supported by council, followed a notice from the Town on Jan. 4 that encouraged residents to conserve water due to dropping levels in the Town’s raw water reservoir.
Todd Sharpe, Turner Valley chief administrative officer, sought input from the facility’s partners, the Town of Black Diamond and Foothills County, and received refusal from both.
Turner Valley, which paid $880 in tipping fees for glass in 2017 despite it not being recycled, is in charge of the facility - where users place recyclables in labeled bins before the material is compacted into bales and transported to Capital Paper in Calgary.
Black Diamond Mayor Ruth Goodwin said council does not support a temporary ban because it’s taken a lot of time, money and effort to get people into the habit of recycling.
“We do feel the industry does have its ebbs and flows and it would be counterintuitive to turn the request on and off,” Goodwin told the Western Wheel. “Then it becomes far too confusing for people – are they accepting glass this month or not?”
Goodwin said experts at the regional landfill are currently investigating ways to deal with the ebbs and flows that come with finding markets for recyclable materials.
Jason Parker, the area’s representative on the Foothills County council, said putting a temporary ban on glass would get residents out of the habit of recycling the material.
“Then you have to worry about people getting back into the habit again,” he said. “It’s a lot more difficult to create a new habit versus staying the same.”
Parker said it’s important that people keep making good habits and good choices when it comes to recycling.
Signage has since been placed at the recycling facility to inform users that glass currently isn’t being recycled, but Lapaire said he’s not happy it hasn’t been temporarily banned.
“I can’t buy the excuse that people are so hard to change,” he said.
Lapaire added that the sign informing people about the situation with glass should have been placed there sooner.
He said the Town has been sending glass to the landfill for two years without telling residents.
“I think that with today’s communication that we have it’s very easy to communicate with people that there is no market, please save some energy, reduce your harm to the environment by not washing glass and not sending it to landfill,” he said.
“The fact they were sending it to landfill, it took somebody on the outside to bring that to light.”
Turner Valley property owners pay $6 monthly to offset the Town’s share to operate the Oilfields Recycling Facility.
