No more black plastic, coffee cups in Saskatoon's curbside recycling program: city council

No more black plastic, coffee cups in Saskatoon's curbside recycling program: city council

Saskatoon's curbside recycling program will no longer accept several items that are deemed difficult to sell in the current market.

At its regular meeting on Monday, councillors voted to exclude black plastics and polycoat (disposable coffee cups) from the program.

"An ideal scenario would have us accepting all recyclable material, but unfortunately that is out of our control," says Russ Munro, director of water and waste operations for the city, in a press release.

Administration recommended that council exclude the products, due to restrictions put in place by China, as well as weak market prices in the plastic market.

Councillors voted in favour of continuing a program with SARCAN recycling, which pays the group to accept household glass.

The project was started after much of the glass collected by the curbside recycling program ended up broken.

In 2018, councillors voted to remove plastic bags from the program after it was decided they were too difficult to recycle.

The city is in the final stages of negotiations with an unnamed company to take on the recycling program. The current contract with Loraas Recycling will end at the end of December.

In a report, administration estimated recycling fees would likely increase from its current rate of $5.66/month to between $7 and $7.50 a month starting in 2020.

According to the report, the curbside recycling program diverted about 8,500 tonnes of material from the landfill in 2018.

Roughly 10 per cent of the material collected by the program was contamination which cannot be recycled. Much of the recycling was cardboard and paper.

More details about the new contract will be released after negotiations are complete.

Original article: cbc.ca