Rural curbside recycling pilot in Olds extended due to huge demand

A new curbside recycling pilot has been a big success in Olds, Alta., and could be coming to other small towns in the future.

The week-long pilot was only supposed to coverthree days but ended up being extendedtofour. It will likelyrun again on Saturday to meet the demand from residents looking to take advantage of the free door-to-door service.

Residents can leave itemsnext to their regular bins and have them taken away. It doesn't cost them or the town a penny.

As part of the pilot, Alberta Recycling provideda grant for the town to advertise the service and thenhad a private contractor come and do the collection.

It means items that have sat in basements and backyardsin some casesfor many yearscan be disposed of safely with no hassle.

"They're picking up old car tires, batteries, paint, used motor oiland electronics door-to-door," said Scott Chant, director of operations for the town.

"We're the first to take them up on their offer, we're the first community in Alberta to do this.

Chant said this is the chance for residents to get rid of items like the paint that has been sitting in the basement for years.

"Some people don't have the means. You don't want to haul an old car battery in your car to [the] Didsbury landfill and this offers that service, for young and old alike," Chant said.

"It doesn't cost the town anything other than staff time to deal with advertising and thingslike that."

The idea for the pilot project was born out of COVID-19,looking at ways to deal with waste collection.

"We tossed around some ideas and said, 'Have we ever tried curbside?'"said Ed Gugenheimer, CEO of Alberta Recycling Management Authority.

"Let's put it out to Alberta and see if anyone would like to try and [a] curbside pickup program. And we were delighted that Olds decided to give it a whirl."

Gugenheimer said curbside pickups take away the chance of people travelling to andcongregating in groups at landfills and recycling depots during the pandemic.

He said they'll look at the feedback and the numbers from Olds to see if the project could be expanded to other small rural towns.

"We're going to take all the information and come back as a team and look at the volumes, costs,what worked, what didn't and what infrastructure we need," Gugenheimer said.

He said the volumes collected this week have been "astronomical."