GFL Environmental Inc. facility located in Dunmore, AB (photo courtesy Colton Mckee)

By Chantal Wagner

Blue-bin overload

Christmas level volumes this spring for curbside recycling

May 13, 2020 | 3:23 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – The company that collects recycling for Medicine Hat is seeing Christmas level volumes this spring of cardboard, tin, and plastics.

Green for Life (GFL) Operations Manager Randy Wong says this time of year they usually have 7-10 tonnes of material a day.

Now the recycle centre is seeing double that number.

With 12-15 tonnes of recyclables a day depending on what area they’re collecting in the city.

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Wong says yesterday GFL collected 14 tonnes in South Ridge alone and over the last 3 weeks or so it hasn’t slowed down.

Despite the tough economic time right now, Wong says people are still buying.

With plenty of TV and patio furniture boxes, and home renovation materials.

He says residents have also been de-cluttering in their spare time.

Which is creating an increase of recyclables being people are home more.

“We’ve got three trucks on route doing recyclables and sometimes at this time of year, they can all go out and complete their route in one load. Yesterday was a good example where one truck had to dump three times. And so we’re seeing instead of three dumps in here we’re seeing about eight dumps a day from our own residential trucks that will get the material so kind of gives you an aspect of how much material is coming in here.”

Wong says their recycling tent was empty yesterday.

“We planned on bringing materials back to Edmonton about three times per week. There have been times where we’ve done it 4 and I think one time even 5 times.”

There has also been an increase of items going in the blue bins that cannot be recycled.

Wong says their site tries to do as much sorting as they can here before the materials go to the facility in Edmonton. The majority of contaminants get pulled out at that facility.

As far as blue-bin contaminants, they haven’t seen numbers this high for a long time.

“Unfortunately with that comes our contamination rate has gone up as well. So that means people are cleaning out their homes and throwing out some things that they think are recyclable and they’re really not. So those numbers have gone up for us as well. So we’re hoping that people will do the right thing and put in only the items that are recyclable.”

Wong says GFL’s street team will be out after the May long weekend to inspect the curbside blue bins starting on Tuesday.

Staff will be making sure the right materials are being recycled.

And they’ll be leaving good job notes or notes on what residents need to improve.