The Town of Coaldale is going green with its blue bins.
A recycling services facility will open in the town’s industrial park early next year.
Recycling is currently shipped to Lethbridge and economic development manager Cameron Mills says the facility makes sense for the town.
“Being able to protect ourselves from cost escalations, being able to provide an expanded service level for our residents,” Mills said. “Doing it in a way where the town wasn’t going to have to come up with millions of dollars up front.”
It will also be environmentally friendly.
2Point0 Ltd. is partnering with the town on the project and technical lead Tyler Beaulieu calls it a carbon capture facility, meaning it will be powered by the waste that comes in.
“This isn’t some new approach to recycling and trying to make a better cup,” Beaulieu said.
“It’s really looking at the way stream and saying, ‘This is energy. Energy that can be captured and used on site.'”
Certain plastics — like clamshell containers used for fruit — store high amounts of energy and the facility will harvest that energy for use.
“Our facility will be able to pull the energy out of these things and that will allow us, through our technologies on site, to heat and power our facility,” Beaulieu said.
“We’re also going to have solar on our roof as well and all this is going to feed our battery system.”
Stored energy will be used to charge cars at the facility’s EV station or sold back to the town at a discount.
Beaulieu says it’s a one-of-a-kind facility in Canada and says it’s all about reducing emissions.
“The intent is to never have to run off the grid and the grid carries is own greenhouse gas emission number,” Beaulieu said.
“That number tends to fluctuate but it can be anywhere from 500 to 700 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt. With our facility we’re looking at being as low as 12 grams per kilowatt.”
A permanent yard waste site will also be constructed.