Piles of uncollected recycling frustrate Vancouverites

Vancouver resident Jason Lyle says he is fed up waiting for his household recycling to be collected.

"We've had three missed pickups now and as you can see, with Christmas and all the gifts, garbage and packaging, the back of our house essentially looks like a garbage dump," said Lyle, waving at a stack of blue boxes — more than a metre high — and other recyclables.

Lyle isn't the only unhappy Vancouverite. Especially in the northeast part of the city, laneways and streets are becoming increasingly clogged with soggy and stinking recycling awaiting collection that never seems to come. 

According to Multi Material B.C., the non-profit entity that took over Vancouver's curbside recycling program in October, snow and icy roads are to blame. 

"It's been really tough," says managing director Allen Langdon. "We're almost a month in where there's been delays in different parts of the city.

"We're really trying to balance the equation of making sure to get to everyone's house as quickly as we can without putting our contractor and their workers, as well as the public at risk by having trucks going down streets that are unsafe."

Smithrite, the company now responsible for curbside collection, has put extra trucks on the road the last two Saturdays in a fruitless effort to catch up, according to Langdon.

Drop in service?

"People are frustrated and we continue to ask for their patience," he said, noting that Smithrite hopes to be back to its regular schedule sometime this week. 

Langdon claims there hasn't been an increase in complaints since Multi Material B.C. and Smithrite took over the program, but Lyle says he's noticed a big drop in service.

"We seem to miss [a pick up] every second or third week," he said. "When it was the City of Vancouver doing it, there was never any problem."

Langdon wants people to understand that the new curbside recycling system is actually saving taxpayers money.

Not taxpayer funded

"A lot of people express concern about their taxpayer dollars, but part of the shift to the Multi Material B.C. program is that the companies that make packaging pay for the service.

"So it isn't tax dollars that are funding the program."

He said anyone with concerns is welcome to email Smithrite at customerservice@smithrite.com, or contact his organization at info@multimaterialbc.

Numerous requests for comment from the City of Vancouver went unreturned. A city spokesman told CBC News that Vancouver City Hall was closed this week. 

More snow is forecasted to fall in Vancouver this weekend.