Recycling depot lands on Panet Road

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This article was published 16/09/2014 (4330 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The City of Winnipeg had little choice in amalgamating two recycling depots, its supervisor of waste diversion said.

Randy Park said with the lease for the Southdale Shopping Centre depot (Fermor Avenue at Lakewood Boulevard) not being renewed and the city-owned land that housed the Transcona depot (Ravelston Avenue at Chrislind Street) being sold, a new site was needed.

Park, who has spent 32 years with the city and the past 22 with its recycling department, said the department looked to relocate each depot to a nearby location, but struggled to find suitable spots. Ultimately, the amalgamated depot opened at the corner of Mission Street and Panet Road on Aug. 18. People can drop off any recyclable material that is accepted as part of the curbside recycling program, such as plastics with the triangular recyclable mark, cardboard, and glass beverage containers.

“We just couldn’t find anything that would suit this size or suit this location,” he said.

In Transcona, the land that formerly housed the depot will be redeveloped into the Park City Plaza housing complex, while Southdale’s land was reclaimed by the shopping centre for more parking space for the new Target store.

Park explained the department looks to relocate to city-owned land first, and then to easily-accessible spots like shopping centres second. The Mission and Panet site is the former, and had other desirable attributes, such as land that could withstand the weight of the collection trucks that come by daily.

“It already had some approaches. They had to be reconstructed, but they were already in,” he said. “There was a base here. It wasn’t just virgin soil — there was a base here we could build on.”

The city’s recycling depots first opened in 1993, two years before curbside pickup began. Park said “It’s surprising how many people use these depots,” especially after the much larger recycling bins replaced blue boxes in 2012.

“What it’s for is for excess. If you buy some furniture and it comes all wrapped in cardboard and you don’t want it to sit there, or you don’t have the time to cut it up to fit it into your cart, or you don’t have the space to fit it into your own personal cart at home, that’s where these come in,” he said. “If you’re cleaning up, or you’ve had a party, and you have way too much stuff for your own personal cart and you don’t want to carry it over for another week, this is a perfect place.”

Park said about 2,000 of the 53,000 metric tonnes the city collects come through the six recycling depots.

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