Although it might be significantly difficult to enforce, the Town of Canmore has made it officially illegal for residents in the community to place items that could be recycled into the garbage.
The new recyclables and waste disposal bylaw was passed by Canmore council in August and included changes that prohibit residents from throwing out recyclable goods in an effort to promote diverting municipal solid waste from the landfill.
Supervisor of solid waste services Simon Robins told council the existing waste control bylaw dates back to 2001 and has not seen significant changes or updates to it since that time.
“This rewrite looks to update the bylaw to support our current collection system, Beyond Curbside, and simplify the bylaw,” he said. “The intent of the bylaw has stayed the same throughout this process.”
Robins said by banning recyclables being put into the municipality’s bear-proof residential solid waste bins, the message to residents is loud and clear – “the less we send to the landfill … the better off we are.
“This should send a strong statement that Canmore is a steward of the environment and help reinforce that recycling is important,” he said. “The intent is to give a penalty for not recycling. That being said, we are not interested in heading out to police it.”
Enforcement is an issue for bylaw due to the fact Canmore’s municipal solid waste is collected from bear-proof bins located in each neighbourhood – making it hard to identify who placed what inside.
“Historically, enforcement (of the bylaw) has been difficult on this issue because you need someone to see it happen and bring it forward,” he said.
Mayor John Borrowman expressed concerns about the bylaw’s enforceability, as did other councillors, even though penalties for breaching the bylaw also increased with the rewrite to a minimum fine of $250.
After the bylaw was passed, Councillor Joanna McCallum put forward a successful motion to direct administration to return with an enforcement plan for the new rules. She asked for additional information to return to council before the beginning of November so any budgetary considerations would be known before budget time in early December.
“If we want to understand how it is enforced in the future, we need to ask,” she said. “I do not think enforcement lies within this bylaw, but within our bylaw department and we need to give them a mechanism to do their jobs.”
Canmore’s long-term goal for the community’s recycling rate is to reduce the amount of residential solid waste landfilled to 0.3 tonnes per person, per year by 2035. In 2014, the average Canmore resident landfilled 0.6 tonnes of waste and the average Canadian landfills 0.79 tonnes per person per year.
According to Robins’ presentation to council regarding changes to the bylaw, it turns out that not all commercial operations in the community have been using wildlife proof garbage containers and wording in the bylaw set out that restaurants and gas stations must conform to that requirement as well. Robins said about 20 properties or commercial operations in Canmore – many of which are fast food outlets and gas stations – do not use wildlife proof garbage containers.
It was, however, for Coun. Ed Russell, a possible “recipe for confrontation” to make such a change to the bylaw affecting local businesses without consultation.
“I have two big problems with this. The first one is we are about to tell all these people at service stations, Safeway and Save-On that we just passed a new bylaw and you have to put in expensive garbage bins,” Russell said. “We are going to dump this burden on them with no consultation.”
Robins said the intent of the bylaw when it comes to commercial waste containers has not changed, however, administration would give three months’ notice to those affected.
Borrowman said with a transition period for businesses he does not think it is unreasonable to expect service stations and fast food restaurants to respect the bylaw and community’s expectation having wildlife proof garbage containers.
“I am confident administration will work with the businesses to make that as painless as possible,” said the mayor.
Russell proposed a motion to postpone to allow administration to consult with businesses; however, it was not supported by a majority of council.
