At the April 5th Town Council Meeting it was made official that VP Waste Solutions Ltd. (VP) will take over the, five-year less-a-day, collection contract for the Curbside Recycling Program in Golden. The “very important” concept, as described by numerous locals, first came to light in November of 2010 after Council passed a resolution authorizing staff to invite a proposal from VP for the provision of the residential curbside recycling collection service with auto-load, roll-out containers as a preferred collection method.
The program, one of which has been deemed important by Council, will not only divert tons of recyclable refuse from our landfills, but is also an idea that follows right along with Golden’s Official Community Plan (OCP).
“Council gave the go ahead to VP Waste regarding the Curbside Recycling Program. It is a program that the town has wanted for quite some time now. Its importance is obvious, to divert as much recyclable material from our landfill as possible,” said Chief Administrative Officer for the Town of Golden, David Allen.
The next step is for VP to actually attain 1427 of the 64-gallon containers in order to commence the program that has been set for July 5th, for half of the community (the other half being on July 12th); the program will separate the town in two (much like how garbage pickup is set up currently) and will have offset, bi-weekly service on Tuesdays for both areas of town.
“Pickup will be every second Tuesday for residents. We are going to keep the town separated much the same as it is now for garbage pickup; 9th Street will divide north and south,” said Parker Vaile, Director for VP.
The containers themselves were chosen by the town and will be blue in colour. They will be hot stamped with “Property of Town of Golden“ on the side with a Town logo. Other features are: allowable recycling information moulded into the lid, an animal resistant lid, they are manufactured with approximately 40 per cent recycled material, they have a 10-year guarantee, and have a life expectancy of 20 years.
“The order for the containers is in, we are just currently finalizing some paperwork. We should have the containers sometime within eight weeks. Then we will need an additional three weeks for us to complete an inventory and then perform the actual delivery of the containers,” explained Vaile.
The community can look forward to further information and education regarding the containers via newspaper and radio ads, residential doorknockers, and the potential information package that will be delivered door-to-door with the recycle containers.
As for the Town staff, they will be busy working on a bylaw to coincide with the implementation of the program.
“Our next step here at the Town is now preparing a bylaw which will officially establish the service, define the rules and compliance measures to make it a logical, systematic, and fair part of our overall utility function, which also includes what the annual fee will be,” concluded Jon Wilsgard, Manager of Corporate Administration for the Town of Golden.
