The town of Carlyle is now approaching one full year of service with Regens Waste Disposal for household waste removal, and it has been a half-a-year since the curb-side recycling had been adopted by the town.
While the new services will be up for a one-year review by the town, indications from a survey conducted by Regens, with the help of the town of Carlyle, suggests that everything seems to be going well with the program.
"We've gotten all the responses, and things really seem to be going well in the community," said Logan Baniulis of Regens Waste Disposal. "We have received around 290 responses to the survey, and on the whole they have been extremely positive."
Distributed through the community via inclusion in the town's utility bill mailings, the responses represent more than half the households in the town.
"The number of responses we received is really positive as well," Baniulis said. "The town seems to be enjoying the services, and while we did get some negative feedback, the vast majority showed people really happy with the service."
Carlyle became a ground-breaking community with its adoption of curb-side recycling, and is at present the only community of its size to offer a door-to-door service of this kind.
"The support for both the garbage system and the recycling system is best shown by the number of carts we pick up each time we go out," Gene Baniulis said, the owner and operator of Regens. "In August, we saw an average of 375 carts on the street every week for garbage removal, as well as 205 carts for plastic and tin, and 295 carts for fibre [cardboard and paper.]"
The fibre recycling has by far been the most active portion of the recycling program, so much so that Regens is now considering increasing the cart capacity.
"We have received some responses suggesting that the cart presently in use for fibre might not be large enough in capacity for what people need," Gene said. "We are looking at perhaps swapping the present carts out for one with greater volume to answer that concern."
"It is a bit of a capital expense on our side, but if the service is meeting customer demands, then it is worth the potential investment."
When the recycling program was first put into effect, one of the cost saving aspects of it was that, once people had begun recycling in bulk, it was felt that the amount of household garbage, once the fibre, plastic and tin was removed, would reduce sufficiently so that the waste removal could be moved to a bi-weekly system, instead of weekly, as it is now.
It seems, from the indications received both from the survey responses, as well as the actual volume of refuse picked up during garbage removal, that this change may be coming in the near future.
"We're looking at now reducing the garbage removal to once every two weeks," Gene said. "In terms of volume, the people taking part in the recycling program have seen a great reduction in how much garbage goes out as household waste."
"This will turn around and translate into a cost savings for the town," Gene said. "Right now the garbage picked up from Carlyle is transported to our landfill site in Bienfait."
"That translates into more than an hour's travel time for our drivers to and from Carlyle," Gene said. "In fuel alone, that is a real energy savings, which would in turn correspond to a lowered billing level for the town."
As well as this news, the annual provincial throne speech seemed to offer some additional hope for cost reduction.
While no details were offered, the speech spoke about a provincial recycling program that will help municipalities with recycling.
"It may be a bridge funding system of some sort, where the province offers some money to offset recycling funds at a dollars-per-tonne system," Gene said. "We don't know exactly yet, but it should be good news for Carlyle in the end."
Carlyle's involvement has led to other small communities to investigate the possibilities of door-to-door recycling programs as well.
"Carlyle has been a real pioneer in this type of system, and other communities are starting to take notice," Logan said, who manages the recycling business. "We have several communities that are coming on-board for similar services, and many more asking some questions about it."
"Carlyle should really be proud of the way the people have taken after this program," Gene said. "Estevan, with its population of 11,000, recycles less than the town of Carlyle does."
"The people in town should be really proud of that accomplishment."
In terms of recycled material that the town has so far moved out through the recycling program, it amounts to a literal mountain of material.
"To date, the town of Carlyle has recycled more than 4,000,000 pounds of material," Logan said. "That translates into a huge savings for the environment, as well as the demand and pressure on landfill space and energy consumption."
In the end, the Baniulis' pointed to one letter to show how people of the community have come to appreciate the recycling service.
"We received a letter response from one resident of the town that was quite long," Gene said. "It began explaining that the person in question had been completely against the recycling program and the garbage removal."
"As the person continued the letter, the writing got smaller and smaller as they began to run out of space on the form," Gene said. "They explained how they had resisted using the carts, and finally, they had started."
"Much to the person's surprise, they found that they really enjoyed using the service in the end," Gene said. "And that the program had exceeded what he had expected to see when it was brought into action."
"A response like that is really nice to hear, because it confirms our feeling that people do want to recycle," Gene said. "When it is made easy for them to do, even people who otherwise might not recycle end up taking part because the demand on their time is minimal."
