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Recycling facility out of commission, residents asked to reduce amounts they put out for pickup

CRD's curbside blue-box recycling pickup will continue
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Cascades Recovery on Bridge Street is not accepting residential or commercial materials while it repairs a broken piece of equipment. ADRIAN LAM, TIMES COLONIST

Greater Victoria’s major recycling facility, Cascades Recovery on Bridge Street, is out of service temporarily because a major piece of equipment has broken down.

That means tens of thousands of tonnes of materials will not be dropped off as usual until service resumes, likely by the start of next week.

Cascades is not accepting residential or commercial materials for now, said Russ Smith, senior manager for environmental resource management at the Capital Regional District.

However, Recycle B.C. is bringing in a contingency plan to allow curb-side blue-box recycling to continue this week for its residential customers.

Cascades, which is privately owned, has a contract to process materials with Recycle B.C., a non-profit. The regional district is a contractor for Recycle B.C., responsible for collecting residential items to be recycled. Subcontractor Emterra Environmental picks up blue boxes on behalf of the CRD and normally takes the materials to Cascades.

Because Cascades is not accepting these materials, Recycle B.C. has found an alternate location for Emterra to drop off its materials to be stored until the repair is complete, Smith said.

Emterra collected about 70 tonnes per day of material for recycling in 2020, he said.

Commercial operators who use Cascades, serving everything from industry to commercial and multi-family buildings, will not be able to use the facility.

The CRD is encouraging those operators to consider short-term storage options or delay their pickup schedule for the coming week.

The notification from Cascades arrived Wednesday, Smith said.

The Cascades Victoria plant manager could not immediately be reached.

Smith does not know what type of equipment broke down, but said Cascades has informed the district that it has a back-up piece on hand. Cascades is targeting having the equipment repaired and operational by Monday.

”They’re mobilizing staff to repair it. It’s a significant repair,” Smith said.

Residents and businesses are being asked by the district to try to reduce the amount of packaging they use and to reuse what they can to cut back on the amount of materials going into the system.

If commercial operators take materials to be recycled to the Hartland Landfill, they will not be rejected but will be subject to a fine. Residents are not subject to fines during the period of the shutdown. They can bring their recyclable materials to Hartland for free.

This is the latest disruption to affect B.C.’s recycling sector, including labour shortages and recent snow and rain storms.

Go to crd.bc.ca/bluebox for updates.

cjwilson@timescolonist.com

Note to readers: This story has been corrected. Residents will not be subject to fines for taking recyclable materials to the Hartland Landfill while Cascades Recovery is shut down.