The City of Saskatoon is sending out a reminder to residents to flatten their cardboard and take garbage to the dump after the Lakewood recycling depot was piled high with boxes and garbage bags over the holiday.
A post on Saskatoon’s Reddit page showed a mound of boxes littering the area on New Year’s Day.
Joanne Fedyk, executive director for the Saskatchewan waste reduction council, said the photos that were making the rounds were a little overwhelming.
“If everyone at the depot flattened (the cardboard), it would certainly be less of that mountain there,” Fedyk said.
She said oftentimes when people see a bunch of cardboard that isn’t flattened, they’ll follow suit, feeling that they don’t need to flatten their cardboard either.
Fedyk suggested residents look at how much waste they are generating during the holiday season as well.
City councillor Sarina Gersher said it can be tough to anticipate when an additional pick-up is needed for the city’s recycling depots, but noted the mess was cleaned up the next day.
“I think there have been challenges we’ve been trying to explore with recycling as a whole at these depots,” Gersher said.
She added that additional requirements will be rolling out this year in regard to commercial and industrial recycling, as well as how the recycling programs operate.
“I do want to encourage folks that if they do have feedback, to make sure to share it back to us – that this is something we’re reviewing and monitoring specifically at this depot for the year.”
Saskatoon has three recycling depots for residential recycling programs:
- Lawson Heights by the civic centre
- University Heights on Lowe Road behind Fire Station 9
- Lakewood along McKercher Drive
Cosmopolitan Industries and Loraas Recycle are partner locations and also take commercial recycling.
The city’s website also has a list of tips when recycling materials:
- Your clean recyclable material can be tossed loosely into the recycle bin (no bagging except as noted below)
- Place shredded paper in a clear, tied plastic bag
- Remove caps from milk jugs and beverage containers, give them a quick rinse, flatten them, and they’ll be ready to recycle
- Flatten all cardboard boxes
- Depots are for residential use only (not for commercial use)
Global News also reached out to the City of Saskatoon for a response and received a statement from Dan Gauthier, environmental projects and protection manager for Water and Waste Operations.
“City crews were on-site to clear excess material from the Lakewood Recycling Depot on the morning of January 2 and it also received an additional clean-up this morning,” the statement read.
“While we cannot enforce the flattening of cardboard at depots, we certainly ask residents to flatten their cardboard to ensure there is space for everyone’s recycling during peak drop-off times such as this. We also ask that non-recyclable materials (garbage, Styrofoam and other materials) are not dropped off at recycling depots, but rather, this material should go directly to the landfill.”
“While the Meadowngreen Depot was closed due to safety concerns, this is not the case with the Lakewood Depot. The Lakewood Depot has recently shifted its hours of operation to be accessible from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with gates restricting access beyond these times, which has gone a long way to curb illegal dumping.”