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%.