Residents are being advised that electronic waste cannot be taken by Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) landfills after a stockpile of electronic waste at the Sechelt landfill was pointed out by concerned citizens.
All e-waste, including old TVs, computers, monitors and power tools, must be taken to Gibsons Recycling Depot (GRD) on Venture Way, the only facility on the Coast certified to handle e-waste under a provincial stewardship program.
The SCRD board was informed recently of the stockpile through a series of letters sent from the Elphinstone Electors' Association.
Dion Whyte, manager of sustainable services for the SCRD, said staff began stockpiling e-waste dropped off at the dump before the province awarded Encorp Pacific the contract to be the e-waste steward for the province in 2007.
"Well before that stewardship program came on stream, we could see that a stewardship program was imminent. It was just a question of when. We made the decision, operationally, to start separating out e-waste at the landfill sites," he said.
Before that, e-waste and the toxic chemicals in it, including lead, mercury and cadmium, were just landfilled and covered over.
GRD was certified to be an e-waste depot and signed an agreement with Encorp in the spring of 2009.
Whyte said the plan was to begin redirecting all incoming e-waste to GRD and remove the stockpile, but a combination of SCRD staff being tied up with other solid waste projects and logistical challenges with Encorp have delayed getting the issue taken care of sooner.
"We can only get 12 pallets of material at a time on a given truck and we rely on Encorp to schedule the trucks to come pick the stuff up, so we have logistical constraints around how quickly we can move that material," Whyte said.
Whyte said the waste is scheduled to be removed, free of charge, by Encorp and transported to the Lower Mainland for recycling by the end of December. The waste must first be bagged and loaded onto pallets before Encorp can pick it up, which will have to be done either by landfill staff or by an outside contractor.
In the meantime, GRD owner Buddy Boyd said he wants GRD staff to remove the waste as he sees it as a local issue, and his company can remove it faster, getting the potentially dangerous materials off the ground.
"It is our position that there is no program in place for Encorp to deal with this type of situation and it should be treated with the utmost urgency," Boyd said in an e-mail interview with Coast Reporter.
He added that if Encorp picks up the waste, it will amount to a "bailing out" of the SCRD while the Coast's only certified e-waste depot is being cut out.
The SCRD has asked Boyd for a quote for preparing the stockpile for removal, but this would still mean GRD cannot be paid for the e-waste itself, for which Boyd says he has invested a substantial amount of money to purchase equipment and train his staff.
"We would not get compensated for the e-waste, as stipulated in the Encorp rules. It would mean that our Encorp sanctioned depot would be denied the revenue stream from this e-waste, which is one of the reasons why we spent over $20,000 constructing the e-waste facility at our depot," he said.
Boyd said his staff could have the stockpile cleaned up within two weeks.
"We really would like to see this handled in a win/win scenario with all parties treated fairly, but most important of all, that the environment be the key focus of having this cleaned up in a timely manner. We are more than qualified to do this," he said.
Whyte said Encorp officials have stated they prefer to handle the pick-up to cut down on the amount of times the waste is moved before being recycled.
"The response I got from their logistics co-ordinator was 'No, we don't want to see it double handled. It's already in one location. Let's just pick it up now. It reduces the chance of further damage to the material,'" Whyte said.
Through advertising, changes to the SCRD website, signage at the landfill and direction to staff, Whyte said the SCRD is getting the message out that as of Nov. 15, all e-waste must be dropped off directly at GRD.
