Brad DeClercq considers himself an environmentally responsible person. He recycles as much as he can at home, and gives compost from his Port Alberni restaurant, Starboard Grill, to a local farm to feed their animals.
He washes and crushes tin cans used at Starboard Grill, and collects his non-refundable glass and plastic bottles. There is no curbside recycling collection at Harbour Quay, where his business is located, so he took a week’s worth of recycling he had collected to the depot on Third Avenue. He was turned away and told since he was a commercial business he had to take his recycling to the landfill on McCoy Lake Road.
When he got to the landfill he discovered he would have to pay to leave his recycling—and on this particular day, it was going to cost him more than $25. “That is what floored me,” said DeClercq.
He walked away with his cans and bag full of bottles, refusing to pay the fee.
He said during the height of summer he can easily go through two dozen large cans in a day, never mind a week.
“It’s frustrating. If this is just me,” he said, indicating the boxes of crushed tin cans, “think of how many restaurants in town are opening cans every day. And that’s all metal. Up and down the Island, that would be crazy.”
Jenny Brunn, general manager of community services for the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District, shares DeClercq’s frustration with the lack of commercial recycling options. However, Brunn said the city and regional district are bound by a provincial recycling contract.
British Columbia has a producer-pay system of recycling, she explained, which pushes the cost to deal with the end of life of products back to manufacturers or companies. There are stewardship associations that work on behalf of producers to collect recycling such as small appliances or returnables.
“There’s all these different streams of recycling.” The biggest one is Recycle BC, which takes care of residential paper and plastic packaging. While the ACRD runs the Third Avenue Recycling Depot and the recycling centre at the landfill, they receive funding from Recycle BC to maintain services.
READ: Port Alberni elementary school students take out the trash
“Our contract with Recycle BC is explicit: if we are caught allowing commercial businesses to put their material in that stream our contract (could be cut),” Brunn said.
Businesses have a couple of options for recycling: they can pay for a large bin or rolling bins from Waste Connections, Waste Management or Nicklin Disposal. DeClercq said businesses at Harbour Quay pay for bins to recycle cardboard.
Even the ACRD pays Waste Connections for recycling bins at their head office, Brunn said.
The ACRD realized that paying for large bins is expensive for smaller businesses, so they hired a recycling collection company and set up a user-pay system at the landfill, Brunn said. “We saw a huge gap…where the cost is prohibitive,” she added. “We charge a fee because we have to pay Waste Management to come and tip those bins.”
DeClercq said it is another cost that is weighing down small business—especially for restaurants right now. “Food is expensive.”
“I’ve heard from other restaurant owners who make such a good case…we’re not the decision makers,” Brunn responded.
“We have written a couple of letters to the province…we will continue to try and get the regulations changed so commercial collection is included.”
Brunn encourages anyone with questions about commercial recycling or tipping fees to go online to the ACRD website at https://www.acrd.bc.ca/120.