An Armstrong businessman says profits at his recycling/bottle business have been curbed by the province.
Woodrow (Woody) Kim is the owner/operator of the Armstrong Bottle Depot, who wrote a five-page letter and presented to both Armstrong and Spallumcheen councils over the future of his business.
The business volume at the depot, said Kim, has dwindled by 60 per cent, due to a directive from Multi Materials B.C./Green By Nature (MMBC’s post-collection processor), which handles recycling around the province.
“The directive has affected the Armstrong Bottle Depot in the worst way imaginable,” said Kim. “It has and will negatively affect Armstrong as a community in taking away at least eight part-time and full-time employment opportunities, and thousands of dollars in donations to local organizations and charities.”
Kim said his company was given a two-week notice by Green By Nature of a new directive in processing curbside pick-up materials in mid-June.
The new directive, said Kim, was “to processors across B.C. to bypass any and all depots who had been subcontracted to sort/count/and pay GBN for all deposit-bearing containers.”
Up until the directive, the deposit-bearing containers had been separated from other streams of recyclable materials picked up through the curbside program.
Now, they are shipped directly to a large facility in Coquitlam for processing, circumventing the depot network, including Armstrong Bottle Depot which had been a beneficiary of the subcontract work for the Okanagan since 2005.
Since 2008, Kim said, Armstrong was receiving more than 80 per cent of the volume covering the north and central Okanagan.
“Armstrong was a favoured location due to its efficiency and reliability of the (student) staff,” said Kim.
By 2010, the curbside program accounted for more than 50 per cent of total business volume at the depot. At its conclusion, recovered materials consisted of 60 per cent of the total volume.
What upset Kim was, he said, a lack of consultation over the directive.
“After 10 years, my company, or any other depot for that matter, was never consulted prior to the two-week notice,” said Kim. “No concerns of depots were ever heard since none were asked.”
Kim’s letter drew considerable discussion at both councils.
Armstrong council voted unanimously to send a letter to Shuswap MLA Greg Kyllo, alerting him to the situation and calling for Kyllo to support small businesses in small communities.
“He (Kim) was a great corporate citizen who gave out scholarships at the high school,” said Coun. Paul Britton, trades and student transition co-ordinator at Pleasant Valley Secondary School.
“It’s unfortunate that he’s too small now to be in this big game now that the government created mega recycling for refundables.”
Spallumcheen does not take part in MMBC collection. Council received Kim’s letter but provided staff with no direction.
Green By Nature spokesperson Daniel Lantz said in a written response that MMBC has not provided a directive to circumvent the bottle depot network.
“Deposit beverage containers are covered under the Return-It stewardship program, and MMBC’s education materials encourage B.C. residents to bring beverage containers to Encorp depots (such as Armstrong Bottle Depot), and to exclude deposit containers from their curbside collection,” said Lantz.
“Although MMBC discourages residents from including return-for-refund containers in their curbside recycling, some deposit containers inevitably end up being collected and, when they do, these containers are processed by GBN. Historically, these containers were then shipped to regional bottle depots, such as Mr. Kim’s, to be accounted for and then shipped back to a material recovery facility.
Lantz said Kim was made aware in December 2014 that there would be a change in managing deposit beverage containers that came to GBN through MMBC curbside collection. A formal written notice was delivered in June, stating the change would take effect July 1, 2015.
“This decision was made in the interest of making the system more efficient, reducing cost, and improving overall environmental performance,” said Lantz.
While he sympathizes with Kim’s plight, Lantz said the decision “was determined to be in the best interests of British Columbians as a whole.”
Lantz encourages all B.C. residents to return all deposit-bearing containers to local Return-It depots, and said the new program does not take away any opportunity for community groups to benefit from the collection of deposit containers.
“We encourage and support these initiatives,” said Lantz.
