Fire at Calgary recycling facility results in blue cart pick-up delay

A fire at a Calgary recycling facility has put a snag in the city’s blue cart service, officials said Wednesday.

The fire happened at about 9 a.m. at the Cascades Recovery Recycling Facility.

“As a result of that fire, we had to suspend blue cart service for the afternoon,” Sharon Howland with the city’s recycling services department said.

“We figure we have missed about 2,000 households out of an 80,000-household collection day.”

Howland said the city is asking affected residents to hang onto their blue cart materials until next pick-up day, which is next Wednesday.

All employees got out safely, Howland said, and officials don’t believe there was any significant damage to the building itself. However, some of the recyclables in the area of the building where the fire started were damaged.

Sorting should resume Thursday morning and no further blue cart service disruptions are expected, Howland said.

The cause of the fire, which was fairly large, is still under investigation.

Howland said “a handful of fires” happen at the facility each year. Investigations into those fires have pointed to the disposing of hazardous materials in the recycling bins, like propane cylinders, large batteries and electronics.

“Once that material gets dropped into the blue carts or recycling bins, gets compressed in a truck or crushed by equipment in the sorting facility, it can smoulder and cause a fire. And in this case, it was significant in that we had to halt operations for a few hours,” she said.

Howland took the opportunity to remind Calgarians that blue carts are for recyclables only and if anyone has questions about what materials go in what bins or where to take other things, they can visit the City of Calgary website.

Anyone putting the wrong materials in the wrong cart, specifically hazardous materials, can be fined under the city’s recycling bylaw. The city typically uses an education approach before involving fines, though, Howland said.