Rising costs of providing waste services in Jasper will be increasingly shouldered by commercial ratepayers.

In an effort to make the provision of waste services more equitable, Jasper Municipal Council recently adjusted the fees for recycling that commercial users pay. 

“This is an attempt at equity,” CAO Bill Given explained on January 17 before council voted in first reading of a 2023 bylaw which sets utility rates. “There’s a direct correlation in increased commercial activity and the volumes that we see.”

Markets for recycled cardboard have collapsed. In the recent past, Jasper could fetch between $100 and $120 per metric tonne of bailed cardboard. However, in September, the Portland, Oregon-based processor which the municipality relied on to take its cardboard, suddenly dried up. Now Jasper pays about $60 per bail to ship its cardboard to a facility in Ontario. Jasper creates about 500 bails per year, according to operations staff. The financial forecast of dealing with it isn’t great.

“It’s getting harder and harder to do the right thing,” Director of Operations, John Greathead said.

But shifting the burden to non-residential ratepayers is at least a step in the right direction, Greathead says. The collecting, bailing and shipping of cardboard generated by restaurants, grocery stores, liquor outlets and retail shops makes up about 75 per cent of the service’s total cost. Including machinery, staff and vehicle maintenance, cardboard recycling services costs Jasper about $140/hour, staff estimate.

The residential pick-up system is fairly straight-forward: Residents drop their clean, collapsed cardboard into one of seven drop-off bins located around the townsite. When full, a haul truck with a modified lift system arrives to take it away. 

The commercial system is more convoluted. Without bins, local businesses fold and stack their cardboard in the alleys behind their shops. Municipal staff “hand-bomb” the myriad boxes into their truck. The problem, Greathead says, is that not all store owners are doing a great job of sorting and flattening. Often the material is left disorganized and contaminated—either by food or by non-recyclable items such as packing foam, plastic and staples.

“It’s hard to monitor, it’s hard to manage and it’s hard to enforce,” Greathead said. 

And it’s increasingly expensive to deal with. As such, council gave first reading to the 2023 Utility Fees Levy and Collection Bylaw, which will increase recycling rates by $509 per year, or 73 per cent over 2022, for commercial ratepayers. The bylaw does not propose a rate change in recycling fees for residential users.

“It’s tough to come up with a better system,” Greathead said. 

Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com