Rimbey residents need to stop recycling their plastic bags.
In order to give residents a heads up about the change in recycling, Kelly Giesbrecht, owner of Cast-A-Waste in Rimbey said March 6 will be the final day blue bags containing plastic bags will be picked up. On March 20, which is the next pickup, all blue bags containing plastic bags will be left at the curb.
Giesbrecht said the change has come about because Waste Management in Red Deer has notified him that they are no longer able to accept loads containing plastic bags and film moving forward.
“With the focus on removing contamination from our inbound stream, in order to protect material quality, future loads containing plastic film will not be accepted,” Chris LeMaistre from Waste Management said in an email to Giesbrecht.
Plastic film includes such items as shopping bags, dry-cleaning bags and bread bags.
China’s stricter new rules on recycables that the country takes from around the world has municipalities throughout Canada facing a dilemma on how to deal with added costs and less revenue as well as dealing with huge pile ups of garbage.
In Canada approximately 20 per cent of plastics recyclables go to China.
treena.mielke@rimbeyreview.com