A new recycling program will be introduced to the Town of Fort Frances in 2023 that will save the town on costs associated with the blue box program – without affecting town residents.
A new provincial mandate will require producers of recyclable materials to be responsible for the product from the time of its creation until the end of its life. This provincial regulation will shift the financial and operational responsibility to the producers.
Travis Rob, Operations and Facilities manager for the Town of Fort Frances, gave the example of a Pepsi can.
When Pepsi makes a can out of aluminum to put their product in, Rob said, they are responsible for the can from the moment they make it until it gets distributed, consumed and collected again for recycling.
Rob said the new producer responsibility model will come into effect in 2023, and the transition will take three years, until 2026. Rob said the consumer should see no difference in the bi-weekly blue box schedule.
However, this new model will shift the recycling responsibility from the town to different producers, driving the cost down to zero, Rob said. He added that post-transition, in 2026, there will be an expansion in the materials that could go in the blue box.
“We are going to be approached by what is called a PRO (Producer Responsible Organization),” Rob explained. “These PROs will basically manage that collection processing recycling piece for Pepsi, because Pepsi is not going to go out and try and collect every can that they sell. Coke is not going to go and collect every can that they sell. It’s just not feasible.”
Rob said PROs will also be obligated to collect from a minimum number of public spaces, such as parks and trails.
The different companies will engage these PROs to collect their products. These companies will pay the PROs, and the town will be approached by a PRO and say they will be responsible for collecting our blue box material. Rob said the town will negotiate with that PRO to say this is how they want to have this happen.
When the town is approached by a PRO, there are several options to choose from.
Rob said the municipality can shift management to that entity, the municipality may act as a service provider where we have our own collection trucks, our own collection staff and our own processing facility.
Finally, Rob said, the town can use a hybrid model, where they would look after managing contracts on behalf of this PRO and they would pay the town to do that.
The only caveat to this regulation is that it does not require PROs to operate a depot in communities that currently have curbside collection. Rob said this will be a negotiating point with the town PRO.
Rob said if the depot is closed, the broader unincorporated areas will no longer have access to it, and residents of Fort Frances will have a reduction in their service level because they will only have access every two weeks – on their recycling day.
“The recycling depot up on Sixth Street is extremely heavily used by residents of Fort Frances and the broader northwestern Ontario community. It is fantastic how busy this place is,” Rob said. “I have talked with some of the PROs about our depot about its impact to particularly the unincorporated areas east and north of town.”
Because Fort Frances is a municipality of more than 5,000 in population, it was required to have a blue box program. Although the town receives funding to cover 50 per cent of operation costs, the town finds itself paying more than its share because of transportation.
“The problem that we have in Fort Frances is that our recycling program is extremely expensive,” Rob said. “This is because our material is collected, bulked, and shipped to Winnipeg where it is processed. We have this long transportation piece that makes our program extremely costly to operate. We don’t actually get 50 per cent funding like we are supposed to get; it only actually works out to 25 per cent of our total costs.”
Rob said he hopes that in 2024, the Town of Fort Frances will no longer have a role in the blue box program. They would essentially hand the program over to the producer, adding that as a result of that, come 2024, the costs for recycling for the town of Fort Frances should be zero.
