New recycling plan hot topic at UBCM
By Nelson Daily Staff
By Suzy Hamilton, The Nelson Daily
When it comes to complaining about the province’s new recycling plan, Regional District of Central Kootenay Chair John Kettle is not alone.
He is among a number of unhappy local politicians from 196 communities attending the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) annual meeting this week in Vancouver who discussed the provincial government’s mandated Multi Materials BC recycling program Thursday morning.
“There is not an overwhelming positive response to the program,” Kettle said from Vancouver.
“We’re not about to throw $1 million worth of recycling out for a test. This is pretty much a concern throughout the province.”
Municipalities and regional districts have until 2014 to change over to a recycling system in which producers of recycled goods are responsible for recycling their products. This was legislated last year by the BC provincial government.
While most local representatives are in favour of the producer-pay plan, they say the scheme to shift the responsibility to the producer will cost them too much in subsidies to provide the current level of recycling.
That is why the RDCK opted out of the delivery program at its September board meeting.
In a letter dated September 12, Kettle told Minister of Environment Mary Polak that the RDCK board unanimously declined the financial incentives offered by the Multi Materials BC (MMBC) at its September meeting.
He listed 14 concerns including renovation costs, level of service, cost of compliance, and ambiguous levels of access and recovery.
“Where’s the recycling going to go? It’s going to go to the landfill,” Kettle said.
“Recycling is huge. It is a lifestyle now and we don’t want to go back.”
Part of the problem, Kettle said, is that local governments do not know what they are signing on to. “We didn’t get all the information from the MMBC.”
“The current one size fits all will not work,” Kettle wrote in his letter. “If this program fails to be executed as designed, there could be a drastic increase in the current materials being recycling going to the landfills, completely defeating the purpose of this program.”
Monday was the deadline for local governments to opt out of the mandated MMBC.
As a result, a special resolution was put forward for UBCM convention delegates to discuss the plan Thursday morning.
A motion came out of the debate to send the concerns to the UBCM executives to take it to the provincial government.
“No one is totally satisfied,” said Kettle. ”There are some really good parts but there are some really bad parts as well.”
