Staff
Following up on a consultant’s report from late last year, the Town of Fort Frances is eyeing a couple of recycling-related strategies to implement in 2011.
The first strategy is to continue with the town’s current and planned educational initiatives, as well as explore other opportunities for public education.
The second is to assess the feasibility of implementing a small fee on retail plastic bags or ban them altogether.
In a report received by town council last week, Operations and Facilities manager Doug Brown noted he’s currently obtaining quotes from two consultants regarding the first strategy, adding the cost for implementing it is 50 percent fundable under Waste Diversion Ontario’s Continuous Improvement Fund.
Back in December, council approved in principle a residential “blue box” waste recycling strategy report.
The Operations and Facilities executive committee then reviewed the report to see if any of the strategies should be considered for implementation in 2011, as well as to establish an action plan for the next 10 years.
The committee came back and recommended an implementation schedule which indicated that the town look at the two above strategies for this year.
At last week’s meeting, council approved the implementation schedule in principle, and also agreed to apply for funding from Waste Diversion Ontario under its Continuous Improvement Fund to complete the two strategies.
Council also agreed to have the 2011 operating budget adjusted to support the implementation of said strategies.
Looking into the next five years, other strategies priorized by the committee include:
•implementing a landfill disposal ban on materials included in the town’s recycling program (2012);
•assessing the feasibility of providing a collection service for “blue box” recyclables to the town’s industrial, commercial, and institutional (ICI) sector, including the possibility of funding the service as a utility (2014);
•assessing the cost-effectiveness of implementing a dual-stream collection of recyclables and its impact on revenues for marketed recyclable materials (2014);
•putting the option of weekly or bi-weekly collection in the next waste collection tender document (Oct. 31, 2014); and
•assessing the feasibility of requiring “bag tags” on all bags of garbage (2015).
