Originally published  Mar 16/16  The Reminder. Flin Flon, Mb. Sponsored by North of 53 Consumers Coop.

Last week someone told us they thought we made a lot of money from cardboard. Unfortunately, selling cardboard barely covers shipping.  

Where does the money come from to cover the costs of the community recycling program?

The Flin Flon & District Environment Council, Inc. is a non-profit organization. It runs the Recycling Centre to conserve resources, reduce environmental damage and keep waste out of the landfill.

As a non-profit, all the money it receives is used to cover the costs of recycling. It must have enough revenue to cover costs.

Funding comes from seven different places.  Here is a summary of who contributed how much in 2015.*

The City of Flin Flon, Town of Creighton and residents of Denare Beach and the lakes areas contributed 27% of the revenue.

Fees for business pickups and red bags brought in 17% of the funding.

Multi-Material Stewardship of Manitoba or MMSM contributed 16.5% in a recycling subsidy.

Sixteen percent of revenue came from the tenant in our building.

The City of Flin Flon pays the Recycling Centre to provide staff at their landfill. The surplus from that contract provided  11% of the revenue.

Selling recyclable materials which includes corrugated cardboard, beer returns and subsidy for e-waste brought in 8.5% of the funding.

Donations and the net income from fundraising was just 1%. Another 3% came from miscellaneous sources like the summer student grant and memberships.

The fundraising/miscellaneous, tenant and landfill surplus categories were down 2% each from the year before, while pickup fees increase by 1% and sale of recyclables and MMSM were up by 2.5% each.
​
Thirty- three semi loads of recyclables were kept out of local landfills in 2015. 

*Note: This was updated when I realized the numbers didn't make 100%. After crunching the numbers again, selling materials was changed from 8% and fundraising from .6% and miscellaneous from 2.4%. 

Originally published  Mar 9/16  The Reminder. Flin Flon, Mb. Sponsored by North of 53 Consumers Coop.

Two recent conversations about cardboard made me realize that people need more information about it.

The first conversation reminded me there are two different kinds of cardboard. There is the cereal box kind and the corrugated kind.

Cereal box cardboard is actually box board which goes in the bag with the rest of your recyclables.  Box board is baled up with the other materials that are sorted in Winnipeg.

When we talk about cardboard, we are usually referring to corrugated cardboard. It is the thicker kind with a wavy layer inside two flat layers. Most things from shampoo to car parts come to Flin Flon in corrugated cardboard boxes.

In the recycling business it is referred to as OCC which stands for Old Corrugated Cardboard.

Cardboard is baled up separately and sold. The price is based on a metric ton or MT. Prices change depending on market conditions. It was worth $100.00/ MT or more for a few months in 1999 and again in 2002.

In 2008 and 2009 it was worth nothing or we had to pay to recycle it. We quit recycling cardboard during those years because we could not afford it.

That was the second conversation. Someone didn’t know we had resumed recycling cardboard.

We began to collect it gradually in 2010 because we could sell it. Prices have varied from $25.00 - $75.00/MT. They have been steady at $30.00 for the past two years.

Recently we began shipping it to a company that pays $50.00/MT. 

Cardboard is 48% of the material we process for recycling.   Last year we recycled 15 semi loads.

Cardboard is easily recycled into new boxes.  Recycling it saves resources and landfill space.

It’s worth it. 

Originally published Mar 2/16  The Reminder. Flin Flon, Mb. Sponsored by North of 53 Consumers Coop.

I was reminded that it has been a year since we changed the schedule for the red bag curbside pickup of recyclables in Flin Flon from every other Wednesday to every Wednesday.

The goal of providing pickup service to homes is to encourage more recycling by making it convenient.

It achieved this goal when the service was offered from 2005 to 2007. Residents were asked to pay $30.00 per year.  More than 100 people paid. Many more using the service did not pay. The record for metric tons (MT) recycled in a year was 500 MT in 2007.
​
That curbside program ended in 2007 because the annual fee did not cover the cost.
 
The current red bag curbside service began in 2010. Residents paid for the service by purchasing a red bag to put their recyclables in. Centre staff picked up the red bags on the designated Wednesday.  Two more boxes or bags and large cardboard were also picked up.

People using the service told us it was great. They also told us the every other week pick up schedule was confusing or they had too much if they missed a week.  So we began weekly pickups.

Usage increased slightly but I had expected more. The cost is a barrier to some. The other reasons I hear are ‘I forget to put it out’ or ‘we just drop it off whenever we have enough’.

I’ve concluded that each home has a system that works for them. People using curbside pickups want that convenience. Others like to drop it off when it is convenient for them.

People are recycling. That is the important thing.

For more information, visit www.flinflonrecycling.org or phone 204 687 6169. 

​February total – 29,985 kg
        Newsprint – 1,488 kg
        Co-mingled* - 8,019 kg
        Office Paper – 3,489 kg
        Cardboard – 15,100 kg
        Glass – 1,889 kg
        

Total for 2016 – 64,419 kg
Total for 2015 (February)  –59,789 kg
Difference + 4,630 kg

Batteries - 36 kg
 
* Co-mingled is unsorted materials sent to Winnipeg for sorting


Comments –  February is always our slow month. This year seemed no different. When I added up the numbers I was pleasantly surprised that we processed 3.6 metric tons (MT) more than February last year! We are still under 30 MT this month but we continue to see significant increases. When I compared to last year the increases were spread across all the material categories. 

Originally published Feb 24/16   The Reminder. Flin Flon, Mb. Sponsored by North of 53 Consumers Coop.

The Flin Flon Recycling Centre is really a MRF, materials recovery facility. Recyclables are collected, prepped for baling, baled and shipped to mills where they are recycled into new things.

 This may seem monotonous but there are always changes that keep things interesting.

A company offered to purchase our cardboard for $20.00 more per metric ton (MT) than the $30.00 we were getting.  Cardboard is half of the materials we process.  Our sales last year would have increased by $4,400.00 if we had that price.

That was a good reason to make some significant changes our operations.

We needed to ship at least 14 MT of only cardboard. This required more bales for a load. They needed to be stacked three high for shipping instead of two to get more in the shipping trailer.  

We had to ship the bales without the pallets we use to make weighing, moving and stacking them easier.   

We had to find more storage space. When we shipped everything to one place, we only needed space for one trailer load before shipping. Now we needed space for a load of cardboard and a load of the other materials.  

We do not have a lot of space.

Out came the measuring tape. After much brainstorming and experimenting, we came up with a plan.

There is a new place for the beer cans, the battery cart, and the shredded paper carts.  A table was shortened.

We must stay organized.

Pallets were modified so bales can be weighed, stored and shipped without breaking the wires holding them together.

Our first load was shipped February 8.

The great team of employees at the Recycling Centre worked together to make this happen.