Editor:
Ms. Anderson, is your letter (Coast Reporter, Aug. 14) really about curbside recycling (CR) fee for service or is it really about possible tax increases?
Triple-bottom-line accounting was used throughout the recycling review. This means every conclusion was determined by considering economic, social , and environmental eaffects.
The cost of CR at $53 to $60 per year was the fee for CR based on the current service provided to Sechelt. CR routinely achieve's a 90 per cent participation rate which means that far more "garbage" is diverted from the landfill.
That affects two things; enables the landfill site on Dusty Road to be usable for many more years, thereby avoiding the cost and environmental impacts of finding a new landfill site or expanding the current site. The cost for landfill expansion or replacing it is in the millions as evidenced in the recent Pender Harbour landfill study. That is a much smaller landfill (about 25 per cent of the size of the Sechelt site by area) and so the numbers are relative to size. It receives 10 to 15 per cent of the waste that Sechelt landfill receives by weight,
Secondly, the green house gas (GHG) emissions reduced as a result of CR are the really long term benefits and they could be significant 26 to 52 per cent.
It has become abundantly clear here and around the globe that reduction in GHG emssions is critical for future generations of humans to exist on this planet as we know it.
The service area included in the review and which would receive the service are those which currently receive garbage pick up.
The answers to all of your questions are likely available only after a request for proposals has been issued. These GHG reductions would bode well for the Sunshine Coast's contrbution to slowing the rate of climate change.
Ed Lands
Recycling review committee member
