A new five-year contract for the collection of recyclables has the Town of Ladysmith seeing green.
With the Town’s initial one-year deal with Multi-Material BC set to expire in March, council has authorized staff to negotiate a new five-year agreement with the company.
“We will continue to contract out our recycling collection and then get refunded by MMBC,” said Ladysmith Mayor Rob Hutchins.
About 23 per cent of the garbage, recycling and composting contract price is refunding to the Town, expected to amount to about $72,500 for the first year of service.
Hutchins said council has asked staff to look at three different options for that money.
“Do we return that money to the residents? Do we augment the collection, because right now we don’t pick up glass and film plastics, do we provide that as a service? Or do we look at a more automated system for collection, a more sophisticated collection system?” said Hutchins.
While film plastics were previously accepted as part of the recyclables collection, it was discontinued because they contaminate the waste stream by wrapping around the sorting machines and other collectibles.
“It’s an absolute nightmare for people dealing with that commodity,” he said, adding that Duncan and other communities have separate collections for those products.
“Once a month they send out a separate truck and they pick up plastics and glass.”
Council also approved an additional $25-a-ton tippage fee to the Cowichan Valley Regional District to cover the cost of shipping recycled materials from Bings Creek to Nanaimo for processing under the MMBC system.