Calgary eyes options to promote recycling and cut garbage

A month after Calgary's blue-cart recycling program started in the southwest, the city says it's considering an incentive program to get people to recycle more.

More than 1,500 tonnes of recyclables were picked up from southwest-area homes in the first two weeks of the program, the city said,but it's too early to tellwhether that translates into fewer garbage bags going to the landfill.

"Until we do the stats from spring clean-up and stuff, we won't know what kind of reduction there has been," said Darcy Cairns, superintendent of waste and recycling for the city.

Calgary homeowners currently pay a mandatory levy of$8 a month for recycling pickup and $4 for garbage. Ald. Andre Chabot said Wednesday that the city is considering several different options to promote recycling even more including the possibility of implementing a limit on household garbage bags.

"Maybe reducing the rate for either the garbage collection or the recycling as a part of the component, if we reduce the amount of garbage we put out," Chabot suggested.

The city will assess how well the blue-cart program is working next year, but if it adopts a bag limit, it will be following in the steps of smaller, neighbouring municipalities.

Airdrie and Cochrane residents can put out a maximum of two garbage bags per home per week. They're charged an extra fee for any extra bags.

Okotoks is adopting a two-bag limit starting this fall, after having a three-bag limit for a decade.

Recycling can decrease garbage output

While the curbside recycling pickup has started in southwest Calgary,and most people are putting out less garbage, a tour of two neighbourhoods found many empty blue carts.

Under the new program, residents don't have to sort recyclables, just put them in the cart and leave it out next to their garbage on their regular garbage day.CBC News visited Wildwood and Spruce Cliff on garbage day Wednesday.

'Recycling isn't mandatory. It's a voluntary program. It's mandated that they have a cart, but it's not mandated that they use a cart.' Darcy Cairns, superintendent of waste and recycling

"We love it because we don't have to go and take the stuff anymore," resident Tracie Neilson said. But she said she isn't impressed with neighbours who don't seem to bother with recycling.

"It kind of ticks us off because it is so easy to throw them in the blue bins now," she said. "There is no reason to have that many bags of garbage."

Cairns said most people are using the carts and using them properly. If recyclables end up in a garbage bag, they just go to the landfill, he said.

"We are definitely recycling more than when the blue-cart program came in," he said. "Recycling isn't mandatory. It's a voluntary program. It's mandated that they have a cart, but it's not mandated that they use a cart."

Cairns said he has seen some reduction in garbage volume, but people are also busy spring cleaning.

Vera Pallister said she recycles, but her basement cleanup and a missed garbage day meant more garbage bags than usual on Wednesday.

"My husband and my daughter each clear out their junk and they don't sort out what's recyclable and what's not. They just put it in the bag and out it comes," she said.

Curbside recycling begins in the southeast in mid-May, the northwest in early June and then the northeast in late June, totalling almost 300,000 houses across the city but not apartment complexes bigger than four units or commercial establishments.