While it’s still about five months away, Peter Fenwick is advising towns and local service districts to start telling residents to stop buying black garbage bags.
That’s because after July 1 only clear or blue-tinted bags will be accepted at the curb.
Fenwick, chair of the Bay St. George Waste Management committee, said the clear bags will be for garbage, the blue-tinted ones for recyclables.
However, he said, other than paper, cardboard and some plastics it is not known what will have to be put in the blue-tinted bags.
The comments resulted from the latest Bay St. George Waste Management Committee meeting held on Wednesday.
In addition to the bag issue, Fenwick said town and local service district representatives at the meeting agreed with the direction outlined in a discussion paper presented at the meeting. From that the chair was tasked with finding answers to three questions.
The first is whether Scotia Recycling, which currently takes the Cape St. George paper and cardboard for free, will be willing and able to increase the amount of fibre recycling if other towns want to also recycle their fibre.
The second is whether various scrapyards can accept the tin cans that cannot be recycled any other way and place them in their vehicles slated to be crushed and returned to the steel mills for recycling.
The other is will the Multi-Materials Stewardship Board, which operates the backyard composting distribution program, help the management committee increase the number of back yard composters in the district?
Fenwick said then the waste management committee has more information in these question, community members in the southwestern area will be notified.
