The results are in: two-thirds of people surveyed last month in the hamlet of Lac La Biche want an improved recycling program. However, only one in five households are actually using Lac La Biche’s current recycling pickup service.
Lac La Biche County officials released the results of the survey on whether or not to implement the Enhanced Waste Management and Recycling Program. The feedback was positive –66 per cent of surveyed residents said yes to the program, which aims to provide residents with free rollout bins to store their garbage and recycling. The plan is to also extend pickup service to Plamondon and the subdivisions of Holowachuk Estates and Young’s Beach.
18 per cent said no, and the remaining responding that they don’t know/aren’t sure.
The estimated cost increase would be four to six dollars higher than the current $15 a month for garbage and recycling pickup the municipality charges for its urban residents.
Currently, the subdivisions can either pay a private contractor to pick up their waste or they can drive it to the dump themselves and there is no recycling pickup service.
The county will be doing surveys of the subdivisions to see if residents there are as receptive to the idea as households in the hamlet of Lac La Biche.
“Do the subdivisions want this program or do they prefer taking their recyclables to Big Jim’s? Maybe some people do, maybe they prefer to go to the landfill,” said county spokesperson Shadia Amblie.
According to Amblie, only 20 per cent of Lac La Biche residents use the current recycling pickup program, even though everyone automatically pays for the service in their utility bills.
“One of the biggest things is that I think people aren’t even aware that it’s available,” Amblie said. “I think for a lot of people it’s not part of their daily habit to save their recyclables, so they don’t even think about it. And that’s part of this enhanced program, we want to really drive it home that this service is available and the importance of reducing that solid waste.”
The waste management literature says that 42 per cent of waste is recyclable and 40 per cent is organic – so between recycling and composting, only 18 per cent of garbage should end up landfills.
“We have a number of green initiatives,” Amblie said. “We have composters that we’re selling for a very reasonable price to help people compost their waste as opposed to putting it in landfills.”
And the composting bins have proven popular – the county quickly sold out of their initial batch of 80 bins and have ordered 80 more.
Whether people want the program or not, Amblie said the aim is to simply encourage people to recycle and to reduce the amount of solid waste ending up in the county’s overburdened landfills.
If implemented, the program could be up and running by the fall. But according to Amblie, it’s up to Council and they’ll be basing their decision on the surveys.
“They’re basing their decision on what the residents want,” Amblie said.
