The Sunshine Coast Regional District's (SCRD) plan to move to curbside recycling in the rural areas will now face opposition from a newly formed citizens' group.
Citizens for responsible recycling (CRR) is calling for the SCRD to abandon its plans for curbside pick-up of household recyclable goods.
Acting chair for CRR, Vel Anderson, said curbside recycling would be both too costly and not effective enough in bringing the SCRD to its goal of zero-waste.
"Basically we all had the same concern and that is we would be facing higher taxes with the recycling process that may be coming at us with this curbside business," she said. "We're paying a humongous amount of taxes now and it goes up every year. People can't afford it."
CRR is scheduled to make a presentation to the SCRD at the July 23 board meeting to introduce themselves and discuss what other options for recycling may be.
Anderson won't say what those other options are until she has had a chance present them to the board, but she hinted that education of the public is going to be a major issue.
"How much can we save from the landfill with a good educational process right from the young children on up?" she asked. "We want to help. We're not there to be stonewalling. We want to have the board look at other options that the consultants haven't considered, even in the recycling review."
The formation of CRR comes as Gibsons Recycling Depot, a major processor of recyclable goods, has announced the company will no longer be taking common household recyclable goods including paper, glass, plastic and cans.
Owner Buddy Boyd said he has been forced to cut off the service due a loss of bank funding resulting from publication of the SCRD's plans to look to curbside recycling.
"We're heartbroken about this," he said. "I'm trying to find a way to keep my 10 employees."
Boyd said the SCRD's choice for single-stream curbside pick-up is at odds with its goal of becoming a zero-waste community because curbside pick-up often can only handle four or five items and is prone to having garbage mixed in. He added he will be unable to compete for household recycled goods as he runs an enhanced depot, something he hoped would be included in the SCRD's request for proposal.
But Boyd, isn't closing the doors at Gibsons Recycling. He will still be accepting 15 other recyclable goods including paint, computers, cell phones and Styrofoam and he has plans to further change his business model while remaining committed to environmental sustainability.
"We're still involved in that and we would like to expand that to a reuse facility where we extract the natural resources from the discards people bring in to us," he said. "We're going to take the higher road. We're not going away."
