Wednesday, February 9, 2022 – The District of Sooke is sharing this message from the Capital Regional District. We understand some residents may have been missed on Monday. If you were missed in error, please call 250.385.4399 to notify Emterra who will be able to assist.
Due to the delays, if some of your recycling has blown out of the boxes, please help keep our environment clean and collect loose materials, such as plastics, to prevent them from making their way into local waterways.
Update from February 7, 2022: The CRD’s contractor recovered a backlog of recyclable materials between Jan. 24 and Feb. 4.
Additional trucks and crew from the lower mainland have been mobilized to recover the backlog of curbside recycling materials in the capital region.
The Capital Regional District and Emterra Environmental, the contractor responsible for collecting curbside recycling materials on the CRD’s behalf, have worked together to add a number of collection trucks and crew to each route to ensure that the build-up of materials on all routes in the region is recovered by February 7.
During this collection cycle each route will prioritize neighbourhoods that have been missed multiple times due to their placement near the end of routes. A weekend recovery program will also be deployed if required by the volume of materials at the curb—residents are encouraged to sign up for blue box service alerts at www.crd.bc.ca/bluebox for details specific to their collection day.
Here’s what residents who participate in the CRD’s blue box recycling program need to know:
- Place your blue box items at the curb by 7:30AM on your next scheduled collection day
- There are no limits to the amount of material that can be put at the curb but they must be rinsed and separated by material stream (paper products, mixed metal and plastic containers, glass containers)
- If your material is not collected on your scheduled collection day between January 24 and February 4, put it back out before 8AM the Saturday directly following your collection day
- Trucks will recover any missed materials from Saturday morning to Sunday evening each weekend
Ongoing service challenges over the past two months have impacted neighbourhoods across the region and the CRD greatly appreciates the public’s patience as we’ve worked with Emterra to return the blue box program to normal service levels as quickly as possible.
The CRD is committed to avoiding further service disruptions wherever possible and to communicating potential delays as soon as they’re known via the CRD website and blue box collection reminder system.
BC’s recycling industry has faced a series of disruptions and challenges since November 2021 due to severe weather and the ongoing shipping, labour shortage and supply chain issues that have impacted many other sectors in the province.
Last week the region’s primary sorting facility for recyclable materials was unable to receive loads from all residential and commercial sources (including most multi-family housing) due to an equipment breakdown and a province-wide shortage of commercial vehicles and drivers. This machinery has since been repaired but ongoing transportation challenges continue to impact Recycle BC’s ability to transport materials to recycling markets.
Although Recycle BC is experiencing challenges moving materials out of the region’s designated receiving facility, they have implemented a contingency location for collection trucks to unload materials and are working to manage the backlog.
Recyclable materials collected through the CRD’s curbside program will be consolidated and sorted at alternate Recycle BC facilities before being shipped to end markets.
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