Rate eliminated, service unchanged with recycling program

By Rob Vogt

Change is coming April 1 to the Town of Claresholm’s recycling program, including an elimination in the monthly recycling fee and anyone with recycling issues soon having to contact the recycling company directly.
Jace McLean, the town’s director of infrastructure, explained a non-profit organization called Circular Materials is promoting an extended producer responsibility program.
Essentially what it is doing is taking control of recycling from the consumer to the producer.
This program has already rolled out in British Columbia and Ontario.
“They’ve had really good results,” McLean said.
Practically, town residents will no longer have to pay the monthly fee, and there will be no change in service.
The company E-360 who is picking up recycling will continue to do so.
However, if anyone has a recycling issue, they will have to contact E-360 directly, and not the Town of Claresholm.
McLean said the changes will roll out, tentatively, on April 1.
The program is all over Alberta, with between 85 and 90 percent of municipalities signing up for this first phase.
Circular Materials works with producers to meet their recycling regulation requirements and design recycling systems that advance innovation, deliver improved environmental outcomes and harness competitive procurement that provide the best value for producers across Canada.
In Alberta, that regulation or framework is extended producer responsibility, which shifts the physical and financial burden of collecting, sorting, processing and recycling waste to the producer and away from local governments and taxpayers.
Alberta’s new extended producer responsibility framework will diversify the economy by encouraging companies to find innovative ways to recycle more materials and produce less packaging waste.
Alberta’s approach aligns with producer-run programs in other jurisdictions, empowering producers to create local recycling markets; design cost-effective and efficient recycling programs; and demonstrate environmental responsibility
Once fully implemented in April 2025, the extended producer responsibility framework will embrace Alberta’s polluter-pay principle and Alberta’s long tradition of supporting innovation.
McLean said that means Circular Materials holds recycling companies to a higher standard, and more material will be recycled.