Editor:
Last week’s front-page photo is a stunning admission of failure. It shatters local taxpayer illusions that mixed material thrown into blue boxes ever had any useful function. One might be excused for mistaking the photo of blue box recyclables dumped by Direct Disposal in the Sechelt public works yard as six truckloads of garbage. Some senior Sechelt officials thought so.
Taxpayer-funded blue bins involving curbside pickup, and sorting of what appears to be garbage, may have become financially unfeasible. Homeowners are seldom up to date on what is currently accepted. Most need supervision and helpful recycling attendants. Educating the public to sort and deliver their recycling to a Resource Recovery Centre puts the responsibility where it belongs.
Sadly, without retraining, the squad of low-wage employees sorting at conveyor belts high above the dusty floors where Direct Disposal blue box trucks normally dump their loads will be unemployed. Asian markets for contaminated recyclables have collapsed.
What’s to be done? An option is a Sechelt Resource Recovery Centre based on the existing Gibsons Recycling model. Not only cheaper, but award-winning recycling that has recently attracted attention from B.C. Lieutenant Governor Guichon.
Our neighbouring Powell River Regional District has received $8 million in senior government grants to implement exactly that. All based on plans put forward by local consultants. And who are they? You guessed it!
Barb Hetherington and Buddy Boyd from Gibsons Recycling, who could now be doing the same here if anyone at the SCRD had been listening to local taxpayers during the expensive public consultation on solid waste.
It’s not too late. That pricey Public Report on Solid Waste is still waiting on a shelf somewhere. Hiring Barb and Buddy for the real thing would be a bargain.
Joe Harrison, Garden Bay
