Posted on: April 25, 2017 | General News
At the Legislature this morning, Sustainable Development Minister Cathy Cox challenged cottagers to recycle more.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/recycling-program-heading-to-the-lake-420385943.html
April 25, 2017
By: Nick Martin
Strip malls, cottagers, northern civil servants, overnight campers, office workers — Sustainable Development Minister Cathy Cox challenged them all Tuesday to recycle more.
Recycle Everywhere has 60,000 bins available for commercial spaces, and 30,000 collapsible blue bins for cottage country, Cox told a news conference at the legislature Tuesday. There will also be a special effort to improve recycling in government buildings in northern Manitoba.
The province has set a target of recycling 75 per cent of beverage containers sold in Manitoba, but Cox hopes to exceed that.
“It’s something we’ve always practiced in our family,” she said.
Manitoba now recycles about 65 per cent of its beverage containers, a number which has increased steadily each year since the 42 per cent recycled in 2010 when Recycle Everywhere was first launched, said Ken Friesen, executive director of the Canadian Beverage Container Recycling Association.
The challenge has already gone out to strip malls, office buildings, and other commercial spaces, said Tom Thiessen, executive director of the Building Owners and Managers Association of Manitoba.
“The strip mall market isn’t saturated,” Friesen acknowledged. “Commercial properties are lagging considerably behind residential. I’d say we don’t have 50 per cent of the commercial properties on board. Space is always an issue.”
Cox said her constituency office staff in a strip mall on Henderson Highway noticed there were no recycling bins after her election win a year ago, and Friesen soon sorted that out.
Cox demonstrated how easily the new blue bins being distributed to cottage country can collapse and expand. Campers and cottagers can empty them in the Recycle Everywhere large bins at provincial campgrounds and other rural locations, she said.
Friesen said there’s strong recycling of every type of beverage container, which is the focus of his association in the larger recycling campaign.
“At the beginning, cartons had a low recycling rate — that’s no longer true,” Friesen told reporters.
Friesen said the containers will be available through parks offices and cottagers’ associations.
Recycle Everywhere will have bin-bags available at our AGM on May 17th.