The Town of Canmore really wants you to recycle.
The municipality wants residents and businesses to recycle so much, that it has prohibited putting recyclable material in garbage bins in its garbage bylaw.
But that doesn’t mean bylaw department peace officers are going to be knocking on doors, handing out fines or tickets for placing cardboard in the wrong bin.
What it does mean is that additional educational campaigns for the public, according to manager of bylaw services Michael Orr and acting communications supervisor Adam Robertson.
Robertson and Orr were in front of town council in September to provide additional information on how the bylaw would be enforced after council gave it third reading in August.
“One of the things we plan to do is rerun the I Recycle Because campaign,” Robertson said. “It is a series of six ads using notable people in the community and all of them came up with why recycling was important to them.”
Additional efforts, he said, include social media and website material being posted, as well as temporary magnetic signage on garbage bins that rotate throughout the community.
When council approved the new garbage and recycling bylaw, it made placing material that could be recycled into garbage bins, and thus the landfill, illegal and empowered bylaw officers to issue tickets and fines as a result.
Orr said, though, bylaw does not intend to police garbage bins, but instead to respond to complaints as it has in the past and deal with situations on a case-by-case basis.
“We are not going to be reinventing the wheel,” he said. “The enforcement plan is going to be based primarily on reported concerns.”
Orr said the municipality wants to encourage compliance – in other words, recycling – and handing out fines doesn’t do that in a positive way.
The bylaw also saw a change to wording requiring commercial operators to have all garbage bins on their property animal proofed. There were, however, up to 20 businesses between service stations and fast food establishments that the change would affect.
Robertson said administration will communicate directly with those business owners or managers to explain the change and why animal proof bins are important.
