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Less than a three dollar increase to utility bills for curbside recycling

May 18, 2018 | 2:41 PM

 

MEDICINE HAT – Added costs for curbside recycling service in Medicine Hat are expected to cost residents less than a coffee and a muffin.

The City of Medicine Hat released the new fees for solid waste service.

The recycling fee is proposed at $6.31 a month. That cost is being offset by decreases in the waste diversion fee and the solid waste fee, meaning residents would only see their bills go up by $2.89 a month.

“For the waste diversion fee we have savings for operating the bulk recycling depots and we’ve passed those saving back on to utility customers,” said Brian Murphy, general manager of Environmental Utilities.

“For the solid waste fee, which is your basic garbage pickup fee, we have savings in the volume of garbage that we’ll be collecting each week and that’s because of the increased participation in recycling. So, all those savings we’re also passing back to residents.”

The fees still need to be approved by City Council. If they are approved, they will not be implemented until July, as the blue bins are still being rolled out across the city. About one-third of homeowners have had their bins delivered.

The city said some residents have already had their recycling bins picked up and the process ran smoothly.

Murphy said the staggered delivery will also help CanPak ease into the curbside pickup schedule and work out any issues before the full roll out.

“It allows the contractor to ramp up their collection of the carts,” he said.

At this point in time, all four recycling depots located at the Shamrock bottle Depot, Kipling Street, next to Redi Recycling and the Medicine Hat Mall, will remain open.