Walsh Street recycling depot likely to be last operating
Thunder Bay’s new recycling operator says two of the city’s three recycling depots are likely to close as non-profit Circular Materials takes over operations.
CEO Allen Langdon says they’re still working with the city to determine the details, and information will be made available once confirmed.
“The regulation requires one depot to operate in Thunder Bay,” Langdon said. “We’re working to extend the arrangement for depot operations at the city’s preferred location, which at this point they’ve advised is the Walsh Street location.”
As of now, two other depots are in operation at Front Street and Maplewood Road.
Circular Materials took over recycling operations across Ontario on January 1, as the province shifted responsibility away from cities. Langdon says the transition has been smooth, besides the adverse weather conditions, and residents shouldn’t expect any major service changes.
“Really the change that happened on January 1 that’s notable is just we moved to an expanded, unified material list across the province,” Langdon said. “So there are new materials available for collection.”
A full list of recyclable materials is available here.
“We want to see a world where not only is more material collected, but more material is actually recycled,” Langdon said. “We’ve introduced 3 new sorting facilities in Ontario, all with state-of-the-art equipment to ensure we could appropriately sort the material.”
“In the coming months and years, we’ll be doing more work on education to ensure that residents know what can and can’t go in the blue box, and we can effectively reduce the contamination rate.”
