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No such thing as a free (bigger) bin in PoCo for those empty milk jugs

Port Coquitlam residents can pay for bigger recycling bins if they can't fit their recyclables into the standard-size cart.

Despite repeated calls from homeowners, a city committee said this month it won't offer larger recycling receptacles at no cost and it won't alter the city's recycling pick-up schedule from every two weeks to once a week.

"To change the service would be fairly expensive," Igor Zahynacz, PoCo's director of engineering and operations, told The Tri-City News.

In 2004, when the city set up its automated trash collection program, each of the city's 11,500 residences received three 240-litre carts - one each for garbage, recycling and green waste.

According to a staff report to the environmental protection committee, between March 2004 and December 2006, the city received 219 requests to upgrade the garbage bins, 255 for recycling and 336 for green waste.

The cost to upgrade a bin by an additional 120 litres is $30 for garbage, $10 for recycling and $10 for yard waste.

The committee said staff will direct residents who can't afford an upgrade to the Coquitlam Resource Recovery Plant (Wastech, 1200 Unite Blvd) and Happy Stan's Recycling (1603 Langan Ave) which take recyclables for free.

The city is also sticking to its guns on it policy for green waste containers. Last year, city hall stopped its contract with the Coquitlam Construction and Yard Waste Recycling Facility after it found commercial landscapers were abusing the free service.

PoCo resident Tod Hyndman wrote to city hall asking it to set up a free drop-off depot for yard waste but staff ruled out a centralized site because of potential leachate, odour and staffing problems.

by Janis Warren, the Tri-City News

April 29, 2007
Coquitlam resident Anisah Madden, 28, composts her kitchen scrap in her back yard. The finished product - a rich soil - is used to help grow vegetables.

'I think we can all do better,' says local

If there's a poster girl for good environmental practices, it's Anisah Madden. The 28-year-old Coquitlam resident recycles, reduces and reuses anything she can to cut the amount of garbage she send to the landfill.

For eight years, Madden has put her kitchen scraps in her back yard; the compost then becomes rich garden soil in which vegetables grow. Her mixed containers, newspapers and plastics are placed into the blue box. As well, her home cleaning products are "natural" and her food is purely from the earth (she work for Ladybug Organics, an organic food home-delivery service).

Her commitment to keeping trash out of the landfill even stretches to her neighbours' electronics.

During last winter's storm, when electricity was knocked out to hundreds of Tri-City homes, appliances, power tools, televisions and stereos were fried and subsequently tossed in the bin.

At her home, the native of England shows the many machines she and her roommate collected in recent months. One day, she plans to take them to Happy Stan's, a Port Coquitlam electronics recycling firm.

"All this stuff was going to the landfill," she says. "It's ridiculous."

And Madden is prepared to pay 35 cents a pound to recycle the electronics, saying, "It's money well spent."

She applauds the GVRD's efforts to ban the disposal of electronics at waste transfer stations in the region. The strategy, expected to come in place this summer, would require the electronics industry to have stewardship programs in place for computers, monitors, laptops, desktop printers and televisions.

According to a GVRD report, residents in the Lower Mainland dump about 20,000 tonnes of televisions and computer equipment a year.

Madden says there will soon be a time when everyone will have an environmental conscience and will strive for zero waste.

"I'm not perfect, but I think we can all do better," she says. "It doesn't have to be that hard."

But being "green" is not just up the individual, she says, noting the government needs to be accountable, too. "There has to be legislation to make corporations responsible for their output," she says. "If you look at the waste, half is from business. That's not right."

jwarren@tricitynews.com

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