Contaminants like batteries, propane tanks in blue bins costs Calgary nearly $1M

With blue bin contamination on the rise, it seems Calgarians aren't getting the message about what does and what doesn't belong in the recycling carts.

So, the City of Calgary is looking at a more comprehensive framework to measure if the money invested in educational programs, communication campaigns and enforcement are the right ways to reduce contamination in blue bins.

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Delivering a report on the topic to the city audit committee on Friday, city auditors said that despite the fact that Waste and Recycling Services already monitors contamination levels and utilizes and established mix of contamination activities, including education programs, communication campaigns, and tagging of visibly contaminated carts by collectors  — blue bin contamination levels are on the rise.  

Contamination on the rise

"Starting in 2017 following a reduction in the frequency of black cart collection, waste and recycling services identified an upward blue cart contamination trend," said the report's lead auditor, Ross Fisher.

"Contamination harms workers, increases processing costs for the city and reduces recyclable revenue."

Sharon Howland with the city's waste and recycling department says blue cart contamination will cost taxpayers nearly $1 million this year.

"We're talking about people putting the wrong things in the carts. These are unacceptable items," she said. "They may be hazardous, they may impact the quality and that could impact safety."

Propane tanks and car batteries are among the dangerous and explosive stuff that turn up in the blue bins, she said.

Auditors said the goal of the audit is to "improve the rigour with which contamination prevention activities are evaluated."

It recommends defining the appropriate level of contamination for hazardous household wast and overall contamination and establishing associated SMART goals and metrics. 

It also recommends developing a process to escalate and remove household waste identified by the Cart Spot Check Program or collection services to protect the health and safety of workers. 

Spot check program

The spot check program, which was introduced this year, saw lids flipped on 207,000 blue carts at a cost of approximately $197,000.

"They're not reading your mail, they're just taking a quick peek," said Howland. "They have a little stick that they can use to move any large materials that may be on the top and they're looking for egregious offences.

"We're talking about blue carts that are being treated as black carts. They're full of garbage. They're full of propane tanks and batteries."

Things Howland said can have dangerous and expensive consequences. 

"Batteries end up at the recycling facility. They get crushed in the truck, they get run over by the loader and all of a sudden we have 100,000 square foot building on fire," she said. 

"Now we can't receive any blue cart material, all the staff need evacuated and that's lost time on our part, and it could result in smoke inhalation and all of that."

'Not the garbage police'

Coun. Evan Woolley, who chairs the audit committee, said the city is "not the garbage police," and has no interest in becoming that.

"This is not about us picking through blue carts to find banana peels," he said. "This is about us ensuring safety and wellness of city staff who are undertaking the pickups of the blue carts and also just the cost to taxpayers if improper materials are being put into those blue cart bins."

But, while it's not part of its recommendations, the report does suggest that the city should consider issuing fines to repeat offenders to help prevent "the most serious contamination from entering the blue cart recycling stream."

The report's recommendations have already been accepted by city administration and they committed to implementing action plans by February 2021.