By Ian Holmes

City expects busy month of garbage & recycling bin exchanges

Oct 28, 2018 | 9:30 PM

NANAIMO — The City’s public works are about to be put to the test as hundreds of residential curbside carts are slated to be exchanged over the coming month.

David Thompson, the City’s manager of sanitation and recycling, said people in phase two of the City’s automated waste pick-up program rollout can request exchanges for larger carts beginning Monday, Oct. 29. He said the carts will be delivered to households through the end of November.

Thompson said the City will make good on delivering previously pledged upsized carts to phase one residents in November as well.

“We know there are still some outstanding commitments that we made for cart exchanges from phase one, we are working through those. We’re staffing up so that will be part of the exercise over the next couple weeks to get caught up on those.”

Thompson is confident additional staff resources and 1,400 new carts ready to be shipped will be adequate to meet demand for city-wide exchanges in November.

iconic voice

Legendary hockey broadcaster Bob Cole, a welcome voice for a half-century, dead at 90

3h ago

first response

New staffing model on Gabriola Island hires local paramedics for enhanced patient care

8h ago

modified weapon

Sawed-off shotgun seized after Nanaimo RCMP spot well-known offender

22h ago

He said two-to-four per cent of 8,000 phase one households in central Nanaimo requested larger carts.

Thompson said City staff may ask follow-up questions if requests for larger bins seem out of the ordinary.

“Where people ask for capacity that is well above and beyond what we would consider what our expectations are we definitely want to reach out and make sure they’re using the service properly.”

Thompson said he’s not aware of requests for larger carts being denied by the City, stating many people realize their bins are sufficient after consulting with staff.

Overall, about 26,000 households received new garbage and recycling bins through the move to automated collection, which launched last December and spread to north and south Nanaimo in July.

Upsized garbage carts cost $25, along with an additional $100 annual bump to a household’s user rate.

Thompson said increased tipping fees for accepting garbage at the regional landfill in Cedar is a huge cost to taxpayers.

“The single biggest thing they can do is reduce the amount of garbage that they’re throwing out in their black carts and really focus on maximizing the utilization of their blue and green recycling carts.”

Taking out Nanaimo’s trash and re-purposing recycling and organics is by no means cheap.

Thompson expected garbage and recycling user rates would be $170 per household in 2019, up slightly from $165 this year.

Rates jumped from $102 to to $165 over the past three years in Nanaimo.

Setting up the entire garbage automation program cost the City of Nanaimo nearly $8-million.

ian@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @reporterholmes