City’s recycling program tackles its next step

MIRIAM HILL

Two weeks after the city of Iqaluit launched its recycling program, it is moving on to the next step in the process: finding a place to separate the metals and plastics it collects, and buying a baler — a machine to crush and wrap the material in tight bundles.

Matthew Hough, the city’s director of engineering, said it’s too early to gauge participation in the program, which began on Nov. 22 with the delivery of blue bins to local residences.

“It’s been the talk that everyone has started, but they haven’t filled up a bag yet. That’s not a bad thing. It just means we’ll see a slow increase in the amount of blue bags out and about,” Hough said. A gradual increase in recyclables will give municipal staff members, who started to pick up the blue bags this week, a chance to get used to their new task.

Household plastics and metals are being collected separately until they can be baled and stowed on Canadian North flights. The material will be recycled at a plant outside Ottawa.

Fewer than 1,000 bins have been delivered to residences, and crews are going out again this weekend to deliver to homes they missed during the first run. There are about 1,000 bins still available.

But Hough is confident that education and promotion will persuade more families to rinse their cans and plastics rather than tossing them in the trash.

“Before we have a major storage problem on our hands, we intend to have the separation and baling facility up and running,” Hough said. “We’re working with the recycling society. They’re starting to take more and more of a lead with the logistics of the programs we’re running, which is great.”

Recycling Society’s role

The Iqaluit Recycling Society is a volunteer, non-profit organization helping the city with its recycling program. The 10-member group expects to have a full-time co-ordinator in place in January.

“One of the first things they’ve identified to get involved with is getting a baler. We’re also going though our own budgeting process right now and council has an amount to consider for recycling seed money,” Hough said.

It will be the society’s responsibility to raise funds for the baler. Hough said the society has a distinct advantage over the municipality because it is a non-profit organization and can apply to a variety of alternative funding groups for baler dollars. There are a number of proposals in front an environmental organization already.

“The word we’re getting back is they’re going to be very successful because of the notoriety of our problem,” Hough said, referring to the media coverage of the city’s practice of burning unsorted garbage at the landfill.

Even with a machine to pack the material into cubes, warehouse space is needed for separation and to house the baler. Hough said while nothing is secured, it’s in the works.

Paper recycling

The city’s household recycling program doesn’t include paper, but the municipality does fund the collection of recyclable paper from government and other commercial offices in Iqaluit.

John Thomas is the distribution supervisor for the GN’s Department of Public Works and Services. He runs the machine that shreds and bales paper — that is, he did, until it broke down in October.

“I’ve been working my baler five days a week, eight hours a day,” he said, adding the manufacturer has told him he can run it for only about three hours a day.

Between 1999 and the time the baler broke, he has shipped about 60,000 pounds of paper South on First Air.

The baler is expected to be repaired in January, but Thomas said he wouldn’t be able to continue to process the amount of paper he has in the past.

“When I did a report for the city about a month ago on all this stuff, we discussed the fact if they bought a large mill-spec compactor, then we could probably help them out with having it here. We’d continue to operate it for them,” Thomas said. “We told them we’d still be interested in working with them on it, but they’d have to pay for the machine.”

Compactors, can cost about $10,000 for a used one or $150,000 for a new machine.

Thomas said he has talked to experts in the field and found it is possible to buy three compactor units and put them together. Paper, cans and plastic can go into separate units to be squashed by the compactor tied into bales to be shipped South.

“It would be a very easy and simple system to do,” he said.

As the recycling program finds its way and organizers search for separation and baling facilities, the blue bags being collected will be stored in sealift containers at the city’s landfill.