Recycling to continue on trial basis

Although the town has yet to negotiate an agreement with Koochiching County Environmental Services Division, council agreed to extend its contract with Asselin Transportation to continue with “blue box” pickups here until further notice.
Operations and Facilities manager Pat Hickerson said Tuesday the reason why no solid contract has been made is due to a lack of information on the effectiveness of the program during the eight-week trial period.
“We’re slowly getting the numbers. We’ve been waiting for the data to establish base costs,” he noted.
Hickerson added part of the problem was the weigh scale at the Koochiching County depot was broken for a short time when the trial run began.
“But we’re moving forward. We should be sitting down with them pretty soon,” he remarked. “Then, we’ll have to determine how the costs fit into what we were paying, cost-efficiency, and things like that.”
An agreement could be struck up in the next month or so.
Meanwhile, Hickerson, who reported two weeks ago that residents have been slow to adopt the new recycling policy here, said the situation is changing.
“By all means we’re getting better compliance. The number of pickups have been picking up,” he noted.
“And we’ve gone from 20-30 slips a day being put into the ‘blue boxes’ to half-a-dozen or none,” added Hickerson, referring to the slips attached to “blue boxes” notifying residents that they’re putting out unacceptable recyclables.
The town has been hauling about one load of recyclables per week to the Koochiching County Environmental Services Division depot across the river—one or two less than it was sending to the Northwest Ontario Recycle Association’s depot in Dryden.