As changes are implemented in the way residential recycling is handled, three yellow bin depots in Sparwood and Elkford will be removed on June 1st.
The community depots set for removal are located at the Fording River Road Depot and Sparwood Heights Baseball Field and Englemann Spruce Drive.
The Regional District of East Kootenay said the change represents a shift to get more recyclables into the RecycleBC system.
“The provincially-regulated Recycle BC program is changing the way we manage our residential recycling. It not only provides more options for residents, it provides guaranteed markets at a time when smaller, independent programs are struggling to find markets and experiencing unprecedented high costs when they do,” said Kevin Paterson, RDEK Environmental Services Manager. “Recycle BC is only for residential recycling, so the yellow bin program remains in place at businesses, schools, and in our rural areas; however, we are moving away from having collections of yellow bins – known as community depots – in our municipalities in order to encourage those recyclables to be taken to the Recycle BC Depot.”
The RecycleBC program accepts a wider variety of items than the yellow bin program and results in a profit to the RDEK of about $125 per tonne collected. Meanwhile, the yellow bin program costs taxpayers about $325 per tonne.
“We’ve had the yellow bin system for over 20 years with very few changes in that time, so we recognize this is a change for people. To help with the transition, we will have staff at the yellow bin community depots over the next few weeks sharing information and answering questions before the bins are removed,” said Paterson.
The yellow bins will remain for local businesses and schools, and the change only impacts the community depots mentioned earlier.
The RDEK said it has RecycleBC depots in the Fernie, Elkford and Sparwood Transfer stations. Hours at the Elkford Transfer Station will be extended to increase public access to the site.