EPC approves plan to ask Winnipeggers about recycling services

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/10/2009 (5868 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG – Mayor Sam Katz’s inner circle has approved a water and waste department plan to ask Winnipeggers what form of recycling service they’d like to see next year and launch a search for a new contractor.

The city’s contract with the waste-management company that currently empties blue boxes at about 185,000 residential homes is due to expire next fall.

City council’s executive policy committee voted this morning to offer residents three collection options:

• manual emptying of blue boxes,
• replacing blue boxes with larger rolling carts that can be emptied by automated trucks, or
• emptying the larger carts once every two weeks.

The city does not expect to receive many bids for manual blue-box collection, given the higher labour costs and injury concerns. But that option is being presented anyway.

City councillors and members of the public were upset last month when a plan to replace manual garbage collection with the new carts in Winnipeg’s northwestern quadrant was presented to council with no prior public consultation.

While councillors have praised the water and waste department for seeking public input about the recycling contract, public works committee chairman Bill Clement (Charleswood-Tuxedo) said last week the consultation is still taking place too late for residents to have any genuine input into the eventual decision.

Last week, he instructed waste managers to find out how much it would cost to extend the city’s existing recycling system for another year.

That information is supposed to be presented to city council as a whole on Oct. 28, prior to a council debate on the recycling plan.
Assuming the plan is approved next week, both a search for a new recycling contractor and the public consultations about the service will take place this fall.