Recycling services will be returning to the Vanway transfer station in Prince George and the McBride transfer station after the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George’s board of directors voted at its March 20 meeting to expand its partnership with Recycle BC.
On May 31, 2024, the regional district’s contract for recycling services with Cascades Recovery ended.
While curbside recycling in Prince George was not affected, those in the district without the service were recommended to take their products to Return-It Centres.
Then on Sept. 16, 2024, the regional district and Recycle BC partnered to bring recycling services to the Quinn Street Regional Recycling Depot and transfer stations in Mackenzie and Valemount.
Following that, the district applied to Recycle BC last November for additional depots at the Cummings Road Regional Transfer Station, the Foothills Boulevard Regional Landfill, the Vanway Regional Transfer Station and the McBride Regional Transfer Station.
Recycle BC came back willing to put a principal depot at the Vanway station and a satellite depot in McBride.
At principal depots, Recycle BC is responsible for putting out collection bins, transporting the recyclables collected and processing those materials while at satellite depots, the regional district must provide the bins and bring the recyclables to a principal depot to be dealt with by Recycle BC.
Directors voted at the March 20 meeting to authorize the district’s general manager of legislative and corporate services Laura Connelly and Chair Lara Beckett to sign a new five-year services agreement with Recycle BC including the new depots.
Once the agreement is officially signed, the district has a 90-day window to set up the new depots.
As the director representing Electoral Area C (Chilako River-Nechako), which includes rural areas to the west and south of Prince George, Beckett’s constituents will be able to take advantage of the new Vanway depot that will open.
“The new contract with Recycle BC will bring bins back to Vanway for recycling and that will include packaging, printed paper products, hard plastic, film plastic like wrap that goes around your toilet paper rolls, styrofoam and glass,” Beckett told the Citizen after the meeting.
Since the old multi-material bins were removed from Vanway, Beckett said her constituents had to go to either the Vance Road Return-It Centre or the Quinn Street depot once it open. She said they’ve been asking for the return of recycling services since they left.
The return of services to Vanway, she said, would make it more convenient for people to drop their recyclables off on their way in and out of the city.
“Everybody’s very pleased that it’s coming back and comparatively to the system they had in place previously, the agreement with Recycle BC is a fairly significant decrease in costs to run these systems even with the new ones coming on,” Beckett said.
Director Dannielle Alan (Robson Valley-Canoe), who represents rural areas around McBride, and McBride Mayor Gene Runtz both expressed excitement for the return of recycling services to the area.
While their constituents in and around McBride have been able to use the Valemount depot since it opened last September, it’s almost an hour’s drive between the two communities.
Since the end of the previous services, Alan said residents passionate about the environment and recycling in the western side of the Robson Valley have written letters asking for them to be restored.
“If you live in the rural areas around Prince George, you go into town, you buy your groceries, you drop off your recycling and boom, you’re done,” Alan said.
“People in these (other) rural areas just want the same thing. Now they’ll be able to go to McBride or Valemount for shopping, which is excellent for them. It costs the regional district less, it costs our taxpayers less, which is important since they’re already being charged for the service through the products that they buy.”
On top of that, she said residents would be able to recycle more types of products than they could before.
While there is an agricultural recycling program for things like the plastic wrapping that goes around hay bales, Alan said she’d still like to see tire recycling return to the Robson Valley since the closest current drop-off is in Prince George.
In a March 24 phone interview, Runtz said there’s a Return-It Express location in McBride where folks can take drink containers to, but there’s nowhere locally to take paper, non-drink metal cans and plastic.
“I know a lot of people just put them in their garbage right now,” Runtz said. “They don’t take the time to go take it to the Return-It.”
Once the new depot is open, just about the only think Runtz said he wasn’t sure the McBride transfer station would accept is electronics for recycling like old televisions.
He said that it is “a big deal” that with the Recycle BC arrangement, recyclables won’t just be picked up but that the company finds places for them to be processed as well. Runtz also praised district staff for finding a practical solution to the recycling issue.
