THUNDER BAY -- A local business thinks more needs to be done to help them recycle and the city agrees.
But manager of solid waste and recycling services Jason Sherband said Thunder Bay doesn't know the best way to help yet, a problem facing cities across the country.
Businesses make up about 60 per cent of the city's waste but nationally, business diversion rates are well below 20 per cent. In Ontario major institutions are mandated to have recycling programs. Cities are also mandated to have residential programs but not for businesses. That leaves any business on its own to pay the costs of a recycling program.
In Thunder Bay, that means paying around $30 for every private sector pick up and no access to the residential depots placed around the city. Sherband said bearing those costs means a lot of businesses are choosing not to recycle at all.
"It's the small businesses that fall through the cracks," he said.
"If they're doing something, they're doing it out of good will or on their own."
"It's really a struggle because they have to bear the full cost of that."
Wilderness Supply manager Mirabai Alexander said she was surprised when she found out there were so few options for businesses to recycle in the city. The city needs to make it as easy as possible for residents and businesses to recycle.
"I think recycling is the most basic thing we could be doing," she said of a business doing its part.
She would like to see businesses on existing recycling routes get a chance to have materials picked up at the very least.
But Sherband said it's not that easy. Similar to garbage pick up, the two streams would need to be separate.
"There's more to it than just saying 'we're going to pick this stuff up," he said.
"There's a cost associated with all that."
City council agreed to a new solid waste strategy in principle last year. Sherband said possible solutions include allowing small businesses to use recycling depots or have a separate depot.
The province also has draft legislation tabled that would make producers of packaging help offset the costs of recycling the materials they make. Sherband said that has the city taking a wait-and-see approach as well to small business recycling. The city is committed to finding a solution.
"We're just not there yet," he said.
