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Glass recycling shift to start for Terrace and area

New depot service will accept several new item types free of charge at Thornhill location
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Workers at the Do Your Part recycling centre in Thornhill load city residential recycled material into the compactor in preparation for trucking down south.

The region’s recycling program continues to expand with glass, plastic bag and Styrofoam drop off to be available starting April 1 at the Do Your Part depot for both those who live in Terrace as well as Thornhill and rural areas.

For city residents, however, it also means an end to city garbage trucks picking up glass once a month, a feature that had been part of the city’s curbside collection program which began last spring.

Tomorrow is the last glass pick up by city trucks.

For Thornhill and rural residents, it means they’ll now have a place for their glass.

The new Thornhill and rural area pick up program had not been accepting glass. Neither the city program nor the regional district one had been accepting Styrofoam or plastic bags.

The additions to area recycling follow the signing of a contract by Do Your Part, a private recycling company, with Multi-Material BC (MMBC), an agency run by companies who use packaging material for their products.

City recyclables are being taken to Do Your Part in Thornhill but regional district collections are trucked to a depot in Prince Rupert.

Do Your Part depot owner Kasey Lewis says her contract with MMBC now means any city, Thornhill or rural resident can drop off all accepted recycling material at her establishment.

“Yes, but we’re encouraging people to still use their curbside service,” she said last week.

Both the city and the regional district pick up recyclables every two weeks.

Those dropping off their regular recycling will also have to separate it themselves into different bins located inside the depot. The same applies for drop-offs of glass, plastic bags and Styrofoam.

“People will be here on site to educate, because people will be sorting it themselves,” said Lewis. “There will be bins set up for people to throw their own stuff in. It will be a true kind of depot.”

“There is no limit on how much people can bring, but it will be for residential only,” she continued, adding that there is no cost for drop off.

“It’s now a no-pay system for everybody,” she said.

For now the drop off location will remain at the Do Your Part location in Thornhill, but Lewis hinted that expanded services means she will need more space soon.

“Ideally we would like to find an end market for it here but people have been looking for that for eight years, so who knows,” said Lewis of the energy-intensive long distance trucking of uncrushed glass products to southern B.C.

She hopes the service leads to less contamination in blue bags.