Plastic bales at Environmental 360 Solutions (Photo by Bob Schneider)

By Hayley Ferguson

Unknown Future

Layoffs come for recyclers after loss of city contract

Oct 21, 2019 | 6:26 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – With the future of recycling in Medicine Hat up in the air, so is the future of approximately 18 employees at Environmental 360 Solutions who have been laid off.

Last month the City of Medicine Hat and Environmental 360 Solutions, formally known as Can Pak, ended their agreement over residential recycling.

The city said that the two sides couldn’t come to a deal over the pricing for the program.

“The last year has been upside down. Everybody knows that the market price is so bad. And I think there’s a lot of talk in other municipalities that everybody is asking for small increases from the municipality that they do service for. And we’re no different,” said Randy Wong, the district manager in Medicine Hat for E360S.

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With the announcement of a short-term recycling in Toronto based Green For Life Environmental Inc., Wong says that leaves even more questions for now.

Traditionally, when a new contractor takes over, they acquire the facility and much of the staff.

Green For Life, who will take over on November 18th until the new year, will not be buying the facility and has not responded to requests for comments on their plans on where they will be sorting the recycling.

Currently, their closest sorting facility is in Edmonton and the only local facility with a baler is E360S. Wong says that E360S could be contracted out by Green For Life to do the sorting locally, but haven’t had any kind of confirmation about that.

Which he says made giving out notices to employees extremely tough.

“Without giving them definite answers, it’s the what-ifs. We just don’t know and the new temporary company could I guess process the material here. But that is nothing definite or nothing that has been said to us. So I gave notices without any really positive future resolution to it. So real tough day to go through.”

Wong added that E360S is not leaving their Medicine Hat facility with several commercial contracts still in place.

There is also a chance that they are able to get back the residential recycling contract, which the city has issued a request for proposals for a long-term partner.

“It’s hard to say to a person that you may not have a job in a month and we may call you back. And that doesn’t give them any kind of comfort of what’s going to happen tomorrow when they are going to wake up,” Wong said.

CHAT News reached out to Green For Life for comment but did not receive a response on Monday.