With the recent announcement of a proposed increase in fees for automated garbage pickup, representatives from REACT Waste Management say that they are responding to increased costs resulting from a variety of factors. REACT sent a proposal to Humboldt City Council indicating a price increase for curbside pick up from $9.00 to $14.30 per household. The organization is responsible for waste gathering, disposal, and recycling for 31 urban centres and 16 rural municipalities. 

The proposed increases centre around a demand for automated curbside pickup and the need to establish a new landfill for the south part of the region and provide upgrades to a second northern one. However, one of the chief pressures stems from critical changes in the recycling industry, some of which have a far-reaching global impact. 

The current pricing of $9.00 per household from REACT to the city for garbage pickup has been in place since August of 2016. According to REACT CEO, Wendy Yaworski, the charges were based on using the Humboldt landfill site for garbage. The agreement included gathering recycling, but it did not include costs for sorting and recycling as REACT was receiving payment from Loraas Disposal for shipping recycling to its facilities. 

With flooding and environmental concerns revolving around the Humboldt landfill, the decision was made to construct a new landfill for the region in the RM of LeRoy.  Municipalities were subject to a one-time levy to cover the cost of construction of the new landfill according to environmental standards. Yaworski notes that there are additional costs to maintaining the landfill when it comes to merging collection cells and maintaining the site to those environmental standards. Those expenses are recovered from the tonnage fee, proposed at this time to be $105 per tonne, which Yaworski maintains is competitive with other jurisdictions. 

Yaworski contends that the original pricing agreement was based on transport to the existing Humboldt landfill and not to the new more distant site. 

“The new landfill was not under construction at this time, and we had no way of knowing firm costs for landfilling out there.”

The presumption was that there would be an increase in transport costs from some areas, but that the original pricing did not reflect those anticipated increases.

The second factor was the migration to the automated curbside collection currently in place for the city of Humboldt and the village of Annaheim. REACT noted that this was considered an enhanced service that would be more costly to supply. 

REACT’s records show that on December 13, 2018, REACT communicated with the city about raising the cart collection fee to $12.00 per household to accommodate transportation and landfilling costs. At that time, amid requests to seek relief from the per capital levies, Yaworski stated that the City requested more detailed information justifying the increase and did not agree to the proposed increase.

The third factor involves the collapse of the global recycling marketplace and its trickle-down back to regional and local waste management systems. Yaworski notes that the initial agreement was based on no costs being forwarded to municipalities for the sorting and processing of recycling because REACT was receiving payment for contractors Loraas Disposal. 

In 2012, REACT received $55 per tonne of shipped co-mingled recycling from Loraas as part of their agreement. In November of 2015, REACT received notice that payment had dropped to $20 / tonne. In 2018, Loraas began charging REACT a fee of $55 / tonne and one year later increased the charge again to $85 / tonne. 

The latest communication from Loraas to REACT, dated November 2019, simply added an additional weight.

“After we had calculated to $14.30 per household price increase for 2020, we received from Loraas a statement that they are charging $159 per tonne for any recycling we ship to them, and that there will be a contamination fee of $125 per tonne, in addition to shipping costs.”

The contamination fee results from the need to remove garbage from the recycling at the Loraas facility. Yaworski says that despite the best efforts of its personnel at the REACT facility, there is invariably some garbage that winds up in the recycling shipment thereby triggering the contamination fee. 

The skyrocketing charges for recycling stem from China’s closure of its borders to Canadian recycling products, recent management chain breakdowns in the Philippines, and the essential collapse of the recycling market worldwide.

Yaworski is resolved to pursue other service providers for recycling while awaiting a meeting with City Council in the new year to seek alternatives and to continue to communicate the circumstances behind the cost increases.