City forces stricter blue bin rules

Improperly sorted blue boxes may be left on the curb more often now that the city has instructed its new recycling contractor to be more fastidious. Emterra Environmental started a new contract doing both the pickup and processing of recyclables for the city on Friday. The city has asked Emterra to be choosy about which blue boxes it will empty, Dave Douglas, city waste diversion section manager, said.

The guidelines haven’t changed, Douglas said: residents are still asked to put their fibre products (such as newspapers) in one blue box and containers (such as aluminum cans) in another.

Buyers of recyclable materials increasingly demand purity, Douglas said — which means no stray cans mixed in with the paper, for example. Selling re

cyclable materials offsets the cost of offering a recycling program, Douglas said, so it’s imperative that citizens follow the guidelines and not mix their materials. Improper sorting is more likely than ever to mean your blue box items won’t be picked up by Emterra, Douglas said, by order of the city.

“It’s kind of like a hard stop,

now,” he said.

It may be frustrating for some citizens, Douglas said, but they’ll have to bring in their boxes, re-sort them and set them out again the following week or take the boxes to the city’s recycling facility at 390 Pido Rd.

Another common sorting error is bagging containers such as aluminum cans: Douglas said the city doesn’t have a mechanical means of removing cans from bags.

An online tool called What Goes Where? is available at peterborough.ca/recycling as guidance.

Emterra will be doing recycling pickup and processing for the next seven years in both the city and county.

The family-owned business, based in Burlington, employs more than 1,100 people and operates across Canada and the U.S.