Staff
It’s time to clean out the garage and basement!
District residents will be able to properly dispose of old paint, mercury thermometers, oil, and other materials they’ve been storing up since last fall when the annual Municipal Hazardous and Special Waste Day goes here Saturday.
The event, which is open to both residents of Fort Frances and those from the district, is slated from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. at the Public Works yard located on Fifth Street West at Wright Avenue.
Waste products district residents can turn in include aerosols, anti-freeze, oil containers and filters, toxics, mercury devices, paint and coatings, batteries, pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, pharmaceuticals, reactives, fluorescents, corrosives, and fire extinguishers.
Last year’s waste day saw a total of 317 households drop off waste products at the Public Works building.
These included 279 households from Fort Frances, with the balance coming from Alberton, Barwick, Couchiching FN, Devlin, Emo, Mitaanjigaming FN, and Watten.
The event resulted in 23.7 tonnes of waste being diverted from the landfill.
Meanwhile, something new this year, the town will be holding a “Save Our Planet One Bag At A Time” giveaway at the Clover Valley Farmers’ Market here this Saturday.
As part of its public education initiative to encourage people to reduce, reuse, and recycle, the town will give out 250 reusable cloth shopping bags to the vendors that day.
When a member buys something from a vendor, they will get one of the cloth bags to keep and use in the future so they don’t have to use plastic ones.
The bags also will include a double-sided fact sheet about plastic bags.
The cloth bag initiative has been paid for through a $5,000 grant from Waste Diversion Ontario.
The same grant was used to sponsor a poster contest earlier this year, and for “blue box” promotion and education last December/January, when the town had magnets and recycling brochures distributed with the refuse collection schedule.
