The municipality says recycling is up 54 percent this year because of its new curbside program.
More than eleven hundred tonnes of waste were diverted from the landfill through the end of September, compared to a little more than 700 in the same period last year.
The city also won awards from the Solid Waste Association of North America and the International Association of Business Communicators for the program, something Mayor Melissa Blake is particularly proud of.
“The North American one, obviously, you’ve got folks from the United States as well as Canada that are competing for those,” she said. “And ultimately it just makes me incredibly proud of the work that’s happened here in Wood Buffalo and in Fort McMurray to be getting that kind of recognition for a program that I take quite personally and passionately.”
The city has collected 670 tonnes of recyclables from the curbside so far this year.
Blake says it’s even more impressive to get these results in a smaller community.
“If you look at being 450 kilometres north of Edmonton, it means everything that we do is a lot more difficult,” she said. “And it’s not unlike anything else that we do in Wood Buffalo – we may be a little bit behind, but when we do it, we do it bigger, we do it better, we do it with that big spirit that we’re pretty proud of.”
Blake says this is just the start of things to come.
“We want to turn our landfill away from burying garbage, into becoming an eco-park that’s going to re-use the materials that we have here,” she said. “So the future is incredibly exciting, and all this with the model of becoming that global leader for sustainable living in the north.”
Curbside recycling will expand to the rest of the city next month when Monday collection routes join the program.
October 29, 2012
