If you separate your recycling, it won’t end up in the Ridge Landfill.
That message includes industrial, commercial and institutional clients in the GTA and Hamilton areas that utilize Waste Connections Canada’s (WCC) services.
A recent story in the Toronto Star said a number of WCC’s Hamilton area clients were told unsorted recycling, also known as commingled recycling, could wind up in a landfill rather than get recycled.
Commingled recycling is considered cheaper and quicker to collect, but it is also subject to contamination. Paper, for example, can become contaminated by grease from leftover food, such as pizza from a pizza box, or pop from a can or bottle.
When recyclables are separated, the chance of contamination is minimalized.
Cathy Smith, WCC’s project manager for the Ridge Landfill expansion, confirmed about 280 Hamilton-area customers learned this summer their recycling processor could no longer accept the material where it was commingled.
“We had to motivate the customers to separate things out,” she said. “It’s still going to a (recycling) processor. But almost everyone in the program has converted.”
By converting, the clients have simply instituted separation of recyclables so that plastic, metal and glass containers are separated from paper, as is cardboard.
“The purpose of the changing of the program is to be able to recycle. They (clients) need to recycle it,” Smith said. “The program they converted to is essentially the same as we have in Chatham-Kent.”
Smith said the publicity that has been generated by the letters to the Hamilton-area clients is positive.
“The article and the discussion that came out of it are good. There are struggles with the markets,” Smith said, referring to changes in Asian recycling markets, where commingled recycling was until recently widely accepted. “We need to find local and innovative ways to manage recycling here at home.”
