No lids on the box’s, I hope the wind isn’t blowing.

I’ll continue to use 3R recycling as they take almost everything and I don’t mind paying for their service. Initially we had the other “guys” until first pick up and we found some recycling still in bins. As it turns out they were very fussy about what they would and wouldn’t take. My wife washes everything prior to recycling it so that wasn’t the issue. 3R will remain our recycler of choice.

Right no charge, just wait nothing is for free in world.

They will make great bins for my grass clippings.

Indeed you will be paying. At the cash register with higher prices on packaged products.

These higher prices will be built in to cover the retailer’s costs and man/hours associated with MMBC.

In some other Provinces, there is no deposit on pop cans. Their blue bins fill up real quickly, though the ones I’ve seen are smaller then the ones pictured here. I wonder if they are going to place these bins around Timmies, Mac donalds and the rest?

So, the way I am interpreting this is that rural residents will be paying the new cost at the till and NOT getting collection services AND The RDFFG will not be continuing to carry the drop off bins? My question now becomes obvious, people outside the city limits who wish to participate in recycling are now paying the new cost for the service without the ability to even have a drop off spot? If this is so they better rethink their new program.

Here in Vernon we’ve had curbside recycling for years. But we don’t have those blue bins THANKFULLY… because I would have no place to store them. As long as we use those clear or blue see-through plastic bags we’re good to go.

It’s about time Prince George entered the 21st century. What the heck took so long? Pretty sure all other cities of this size has had recycling for years. Why is PG so slow to progress????? It’s ridiculous! Maybe they should ask those cities how to do it as clearly they are struggling to figure this out!!!

using plastic bags for recycling in an oxymoron!!! Unless they are biodegradable.

There’s no question, MMBC is in it to make as much money as possible. They are accountable to no-one.

As Pylot said, this is not a ‘free’ service as we’ll be paying higher prices for most everything. Get ready to dig a little deeper in your pockets. How deep is anyone’s guess.

We all live in the city of backwardness. That’s why it has taken sooooo long to roll out something like this. Past Mayors lived in the Stone Age. Not saying Shari Green has brought PG out of the Stone Age but this is a start and I welcome it.

What do we do with bins on rainy or snowy days? Soggy newspapers, ?

I will continue to recycle the way I do now and will use those bins for whatever I like. If the drop off bins disappear then maybe I will use the blue bins and maybe I won’t.

Next up will be a bylaw that if you put your recycling bins out on a windy day you will be fined for littering!

No thanks. I’ll continue to take my recyclables to the depot myself. I don’t need papers blowing everywhere and I’ll still need to drop off cans and other recyclables to the depot. Besides those bins don’t look like they could hold two weeks worth of cardboard and paper.

so if recycle pick up starts in Sept but the drop bins are gone in May where do I put my recycle stuff for four months? city hall? there is so much trash in this city and lots of room for improvement but little to no will make this place nice.

so they take all plastic too right???

pookerjams wrote: “Past Mayors lived in the Stone Age”

This is a provincial program to get any communities that do not have a viable recycling program off their hind ends.

NoWay wrote: “They will make great bins for my grass clippings.”

Obviously just because people get these bins, some will not use them for the intended purpose. That means, unless they are super recyclers on their own, or decide to continue with another service if that still remains viable after this, they will continue to add to the landfill which will mean that tipping charges will not go down as far as they could and landfills will not last as long as they could.

—————— bin size

I too was surprised at the bin size. However, I have seen several communities where bins were not large enough and excess was dropped next to the bin. The additional recyclables were typically picked up as well.

As to the lids … If there are no holes at the bottom of the bins, they should be extra fun to collect on rainy days … ;-)

Why were cans considered too inefficient for picking up garbage, but it’s alright for recycling?

This isn’t about saving the planet. It’s about making money.

I love the smell of soggy newsprint & cardbord in the morning… smells like victory.

——

“so they take all plastic too right?”

Who knows? The MMBC site still doesn’t provide a detailed list for what can be recycled in your area. They just say to refer to the Recycling Council of BC or your local Gov’t.

I don’t think it is clear whether there will be any bins at any of the transfer stations after the roll out by MMBC. We may not have that option whether we want it or not.

I moved here from the big coastal city 20 years ago (bringing my blue bins with me) and have religuously recycled the little we can do here since. We take our milk jugs, milk/juice cartons to BBK, tins and paper products to transfer station every 3-4 weeks. I have always lamented the fact that we didn’t have glass and plastic recycling options here, but understood that the transportation costs to the coast were prohibitive. I compost all vegetable waste too. I watch my lazy neighbours with their overflowing extra large garbage bins and wonder at the stupidity of some of our city’s residents.

Spent a few weeks in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut some years ago, and the Arctic cannot recycle anything due to the overwhelming shipping costs – including large mechanical equipment, vehicles, or any household goods. It is a tragedy how full their dumps are up there.

Can’t leave well enough alone. eh? Try YouTube. Penn & Teller “Recycling Bullshit”. Food for thought. I meant to type Bulls–t. Sorry about that.

My understanding is that this MMBC program in PG will be for paper and paper based products only. There is no mention of plastics of any kind that I can find. Nor items like tinfoil or glass.

I suppose those items outside of paper will have to be dealt with in the current fashion.

There are so many things about this that I don’t like, I don’t know where to start. We need to give people who want to recycle options, but this model just doesn’t work for me on a whole range of levels.

First, if businesses just pass on the cost of recycling to the consumer, where is the incentive to reduce packaging? Where is the incentive, and where would investment capital come for innovation in the area of packaging? This just reinforces the laziness that got us into this predicament in the first place, in my opinion. The goal should be to reduce packaging, and especially packing that causes serious environmental implications; like plastics. There is also no inducement to recycle. You may be able to reduce your garbage can size and save that way. We already use the smallest size available, so there really isn’t an upside that I can see for me unless we really start to save on tipping fees, but then there is the whole lack of economies of scale thing to consider there as volumes start to reduce, but cost doesn’t fall proportionally.

I hate hidden fees and taxes and this is going to become one. I don’t think door to door service is the right model for recycling, in fact I think it’s downright unevironmental. We’re now going to send around a second set of large trucks to idle through town and stop at the 20,000 odd households to pick of these blue bins of varying weight. I can just see the repetitive strain injuries coming. What are these workers going to earn? What kind of benefits are they going to have; short-term disability, long-term disability? I understand there are going to be 3 trucks for Prince George. How many employees? I’m guessing 3 per truck; 1 to drive, 2 to pickup the recycling and throw it into the truck? Then, where are they going to take the recycling materials? Do they then have to sort and package it for distribution to recycling or warehousing facilities? How many employees and costs will that incur. This is going to be a very expensive service, and that’s if everything goes well. It costs $3.5 million a year to haul our garbage with automated trucks that eliminate the human frailty problem and this garbage stays in our community. We don’t ship it to points unknown throughout the province. I’m paying about $140/year for garbage removal, and I would be really surprised if the recycling didn’t cost as much or more run this way. Now I’ve done what I think is a fair estimate of the number of individually packaged or bag items that we buy in a month, including our groceries. We don’t buy newspaper or magazine products. I estimate that we buy 300 different individually packaged products, and that’s a high estimate. So, that’s 3600 units of packaging per year. Assuming the estimated half cent/unit cost, it would cost me approximately $18/per year to recycle. Not bad really. However, if my inkling is even remotely correct, and the cost will be more approximate to our garbage removal costs, even though it will only happen half as often, then the real cost would be more like $140/3600=$0.0388888 cents/unit on average, not $0.005 /unit.

The thoughts just go on and on, like the cost of administration and enforcement for businesses. I think this is a nightmare waiting to happen and it’s going to be on our dime, make no mistake. I like the drop box program. I think it’s much more efficient and sensible than this new methodology.

Bottom line though is we need to stop using so much packaging materials and ones that are detrimental to the environment in particular. I don’t see how this addresses that problem at all. So it gets an epic fail from me.

If you purchase a product in big plastic bubble packaging with a cardboard insert, you will be paying extra at the cash register. The retailer had to pay extra for the recycling costs of the packaging, and the hours it takes to document every product’s packaging. Even things like product manuals have to be weighed and documented.

But only the paper/cardboard is going to be picked up in PG by the MMBC program. You still have to deal with the plastic on your own terms. Yet you’ve paid for it to be recycled.

Money grab.

I can’t say as though snow or rain has ever been an issue out here. I can still put my bins at the end of the driveway and the trucks still pick them up and empty them.

On REALLY windy days, some of the paper can get blown around, but I just pickup the stuff that collects in my yard and I put it back in the bin for the next pickup. My neighbours do the same.

The one bin we do have that you won’t, is for compost. We can also put yard waste out for the days where compost is picked up.

I would hazard a guess that we had twice as much stuff hitting the garbage in PG compared to what we do here.

Why not have the retailer get a big blue dumpster and leave the packaging with him? Think of the carbon footprint of those big trucks. Think of the children, too.

A couple more items that retailers have to keep track of in this program, because it ends up in the customers hands.

Receipt paper
Clothing sale tags
Plastic bags

Its all about the money honey.
metalman.

Here’s the guide book for all retailers. A lot of plastic and metals on the list over and above paper based products they must document.

Unless someone can show me otherwise, I only see paper mentioned in this story for PG.

http://multimaterialbc.ca/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/info-session/MMBC-producer-guidebook.pdf

MMBC deal should be causing us all concern

Kelvin Mcculloch / Campbell River Courier-Islander
April 11, 2014 12:00 AM

So why did the B.C. Liberal government set up its recycling stewardship program and MMBC outside the jurisdiction of the office of the Auditor General and the Province’s Financial Administration Act? Back in the ’80s and ’90s, the game of choice for a dishonest federal or provincial government was to set up a government-funded program with broad motherhood objectives, then flow massive amounts of taxpayer dollars to one or more key advertising agencies that were supposed to produce the necessary information, marketing materials and ad campaigns.

But the real game was corruption involving misdirection and misuse of taxpayer dollars. In the case of the Sponsorship Program in Quebec, the federal Auditor General figured it out with the help of Ernst & Young and a whistle blower. The AG reported on the ‘appalling and unacceptable’ situation, then called in the RCMP. The AG reported in 2004 that as much as $100 million out of $250 million in contracts was awarded to Liberal-friendly ad agencies with little or no work done.

There was a lot of fallout.

The presidents of the Business Development Bank, Via Rail and Canada Post were all canned. The ensuing Gomery Commission reported that firms were winning contracts based on donations to Federal Liberals with little or no work being done. According to a recent CBC report, the RCMP said Jacques Corriveau, a long time federal Liberal organizer and ad agent receiving Sponsorship monies, alleged he could exert influence over the Federal government to obtain contracts in exchange for millions of dollars of kickbacks for himself and others.

The Sponsorship Program ran between 1996 and 2004. The Gomery Commission cost taxpayers $14 million.

Untold amounts of additional taxpayer dollars went into the ensuing court cases. The investigation into the activities of Corriveau continued until 2013.

Finally, Corriveau’s trial date has been set for next month, May 2014.

You think something like this couldn’t happen in British Columbia? Well, it already did. In 1983 the Auditor General of British Columbia, Mrs. Erma Morrison, uncovered inappropriate payments and missing expenditure controls in the Ministry of Tourism in British Columbia.

McKim Advertising had been appointed the ‘Agency of Record’ for the Ministry of Tourism. All ad monies of the Ministry were funneled through that agency.

Ultimately, Mrs. Morrison reported in a special report to the Legislative Assembly that weaknesses in internal control and poorly documented payments to McKim Advertising were so numerous as to suggest dishonesty on the part of the ministry.

The Vancouver Commercial Crime Squad was called in. Dennis Cocke, MLA for New Westminster, brought the matter to the Legislative Assembly citing secret bank accounts, double billing and a milliondollar cost overrun. The Deputy Minister of Tourism took the fall.

Once again it was the provincial Auditor General who saved the day back in 1984.

That’s long enough ago that people don’t remember. But I do, I might have been on the team of external auditors hired by the Ministry of Tourism to assist with the mop up after the Auditor General and the Vancouver Commercial Crime Squad finished their investigations.

Now back to my original question, why did the B.C. Liberal government set up MMBC outside the jurisdiction of the Office of the Auditor General and the province’s Financial Administration Act? Why is the ever-shrinking list of targeted companies being forced to pay fees in the millions of dollars directly to an organization taking the form of a not-for-profit society instead of paying taxes into the province’s Consolidated Revenue Fund? Why did the B.C. Liberal government set everything up this way? I have more questions. Why did MMBC file a notice of intention to borrow $1.5 million from the Ontario-based CSSA exactly one week after the last election? Why aren’t the audited financial statements of MMBC from inception available for scrutiny? How is MMBC going to repay the other monies it intended to borrow from various industry associations in Ontario? The answer to everything is hiding in plain sight, in a You-Tube video by MC Hammer – U Can’t Touch This.

What a great video, I watched it again last weekend. I can just imagine the provincial Liberals jumping around to the beat, ‘U Can’t Touch This, U Can’t Touch This’, referring to the oversight responsibilities of the current Auditor General, the Legislature, and therefore you and I. Think I’m kidding? My friends, in my opinion you are about to see the entire recycling industry in British Columbia fall under the control of MMBC and CSSA with the B.C. Liberals controlling the situation from behind closed doors through its stewardship regulations.

It is your B.C. businesses that are being forced by the Liberal government to pay outside the public accounts of the province to make this possible. And under the MMBC arrangements, no one has the authority to prevent or detect financial misdealing’s on behalf of the paying companies, the taxpayers, or you and I the voters. Not the federal Auditor General, not the provincial Auditor General, not anyone. Do we know why the government has structured things to place the financial affairs of MMBC outside the scrutiny of the Auditor General? No. Should we be concerned? You bet.

In five years, the magnitude of funds that will have flowed through MMBC, say $400 million, will rival the total amount of all funds that flowed through the federal Sponsorship Program. But unlike that program, U Can’t Touch This.

Wake up people, it’s Hammer Time.

Kelvin McCulloch

– See more at: http://www.courierislander.com/opinion/mmbc-deal-should-be-causing-us-all-concern-1.951033#sthash.TZFp7xCY.dpuf

What Kelvin Mcculloch posted also applies to Independent power Producers and the so called carbon tax, no accountability.

Vernon has the best program, it is easy and everything goes in the blue bag. You receive a list of what not to put in and the list is very small. The blue bag is also recycled.

People get off your lazy asses and recycle yourself or else get ready for the biggest tax increase you will ever see.

The decision has been made. MMBC is coming in, it’s just a matter of how much it’s going to cost, and it will be hard to track because it will all be hidden.

The proposed contractor for PG is Emterra, and they have had a ton of complaints in Winnipeg.

Our recycling program in Port Moody is excellent, and something I hope PG would adopt someday.

We put out a bin weekly, that is very similar to what PG uses for garbage, except it has a blue lid.

We can put all recyclables into the one bin… no need for sorting. We put in paper, cardboard, glass bottles/jars, tin/aluminum cans, milk jugs, and plastics coded 1,2,4,5 and 6 (but not Styrofoam).

It all gets sorted at a plant that employs adults who have developmental disabilities. This is good use of tax money IMO.

Only 25% of Port Moody’s waste goes into the landfill, as compared to the provincial average of 65%.

If some one is lazy enough and they put pop cans and beer bottles in those blue bins for recycling as sure as the crows know where the garbage truck is, some guy with an old pickup truck and a little kid could clear a small income by preceding MMBCs timed collection.

So business will probably increase their prices to cover the costs they will incur. What’s to stop them from putting the prices up double what it costs them and then claim it’s due to the recycle problem?

Put all your garbage and recycling into one container that is picked up by truck every 5 working days. When that truck is full the lone operator can drive it to the sanitary landfill and dump it. There a boatload of Temporary Foreign Workers can sort it into recyclable categories. Everyone will be happy!

As someone who lives outside the city I am with watchdog on this, why do I have to pay more to buy a newspaper to cover the cost of a service that I won’t be getting. Talk about sticking it to rural residents. Who thought up this crazy deal?

“What’s to stop them from putting the prices up double what it costs them and then claim it’s due to the recycle problem?”

The same thing as what stops them from putting up the price because the owner needs to buy a new car, and thus needs a raise …… competition … ;-)