The Sunshine Coast Regional District has rejected three proposals from private companies for a new recycling contract. Instead, in a closed-door meeting Jan. 20, the SCRD board decided to continue running its recycling program in-house.
The board approved a recycling budget of $26,800 per month, plus administration costs of about nine per cent, for an annual total of close to $350,000. SCRD chair Ed Steeves said that price tag was lower than any of the three private recycling proposals.
Steeves would not reveal details of the three rejected proposals, saying that would be unfair to the companies involved. As well, he said a detailed breakdown of the recycling budget would not be made public.
Steve Lee, the manager of infrastructure services, said he would not describe details of the recycling budget because doing so would reveal "proprietary information."
Steeves said the SCRD's current recycling program, which provides drop-off depots in supermarket parking lots in Sechelt and Gibsons, has been well received.
"Everybody seems happy. We're getting very few complaints," he said.
Currently, the SCRD operates two drop-off recycling depots, one at Extra Foods in Sechelt and the other at Gibsons Park Plaza. The SCRD has contracted with Direct Disposal to sort and ship the recyclables at a transfer station in Sechelt near Porpoise Bay.
Lee said the SCRD earns about $5,000 a month from the sale of recyclables, mostly cardboard and office paper. There is a net cost for recycling plastics, he said. The SCRD does not recycle glass, but crushes it at the Sechelt dump and uses it as gravel.
"Nobody wants to buy it," Lee explained. "It costs more money and energy, in terms of greenhouse gases, to recycle it. It's better just to crush it up and use it as aggregate, for cover, drain rock and fill."
The SCRD board had struggled to decide how to handle recycling since the non-profit Sunshine Coast Recycling and Processing Society (SCRAPS) closed its doors in October 2003. SCRAPS operated two staffed depots, one in Gibsons and one in Sechelt, for $17,200 a month.
Last year, the SCRD advertised a request for proposals for the recycling contract, then rejected three private proposals which ranged in price from $28,600 to $41,533 per month. That request for proposals generated controversy at the board table, partly because of a last-minute decision to change the requirements from two staffed depots to one.
The SCRD issued a second request for proposals last fall, asking for a level of service similar to what SCRAPS used to provide. This time the board decided to make the recycling decision in camera rather than having an open debate.
