: CYCUNGING. y : PLANS ; corms PLANS pecycune WNC. ¢ At the Peterborough, Ontario recycling operation, truck driver and local union member Lloyd Moore drops off a load of recycled waste products. Recycling industry provides steady work ne certain area of job growth in the Canadian economy in the years ahead is the recycling industry. More and more municipalities across Canada are putting in blue box programs and recycling depots. In the municipality of Peterbor- ough, Ontario, thirteen I.W.A. CANADA Local 700 members are employed for Scott’s Plains Recycling Inc., picking up all of the blue boxes in the city of 75,000. Eleven of the crew members are truck drivers while the other two are bailer operators. The rest of the work- force inside the plant, which help sort the recyclables, are tenants from half way houses, released from prison pro- grams while they are integrating back into the community. Those tem- porary workers are not union. The drivers spend most of their days making curbside stops and throwing the contents of the blue boxes (bottles and cans, paper prod- ucts and newsprint) into either side- loading or rear-loading trucks. Each area of the city has its own day for pick up. “It’s not an easy job,” says Local 700 President Ron Diotte. “These guys work hard and they work steady all day. We are having a real problem with the company forcing overtime on the crew and it’s not unusual to see people working 12-14 hour days. ‘When the company tells them that’s their run, they have to finish it.” Besides the constant mounting and dismounting of the trucks, the work- ers are faced with passing traffic and endless lifting. “We've got a couple of cases of guys who have had to go on compensation for back and shoulder injuries. One guy had bursitis develop in his shoul- der and has been off and on compen- sation,” said Diotte. Another important issue that the union is concerned about is worker exposure to potentially toxic waste material. “Our people never know what they are going to find in the blue boxes. There can be personal sanitation products, needles and all kinds of filthy things. When it rains, contam- inated water builds up and the work- ers sure don’t have time to look through the boxes,” added the local union president. These and other issues, like better pay and benefits, will be addressed at the bargaining table when the local and the employer meet in the near future to negotiate a collective agree- ment which expires in February 2000. The bargaining unit has been in the I.W.A. since 1993 and is currently on its third collective agreement. The city of Peterborough is about a two hour drive up Highway 401, north of Toronto. It has tough recy- cling bylaws which make participa- tion a necessity. Its by-laws now say that a house can put out only two garbage bag-sized loads of waste out for curbside pick-up. If one of the regular city garbage driver suspects that there are recy- clable materials in the bags or cans of garbage, they can leave them behind. “The people of Peterborough are responding well to the program and it is one of the leaders in Ontario and, if not, Canada,” said Brother Diotte. “There is a great deal of pride in the community.” “Unlike some other cities, includ- ing Toronto, Peterborough sorts all of its recyclables and sends them to pur- chasers,” he added. Scott’s Plains is a recycling leader which has one of the industry’s most efficient sorting sys- tems. With respect to the containers, loads are dumped onto a conveyor belt. A magnet system picks up the steel cans and shoots them off into a separate bin. Then a reverse polarity process gets the aluminum cans to shoot off into another bin. Left are glass bottles and plastic containers which are shifted by weight and sorted by hand. Outside of beer bottles and cans, in Ontario there are no deposits on bot- tle, cans, plastics or glass. That cre- member Joe Nadeau. ° Local 700 president Ron Diotte stops by to discuss the contract with union ates giant-scale recycling problems. At this point in time over 70 munic- ipalities are discussing pressuring the government to put a deposit on liquor bottles. According to Scott’s Plains man- ager John Baldry, the company now picks up over 14,000 tons of recy- clable material on an annual basis — that’s way up from the 6,000 tons the company collected in 1990 when oper- ations began. isp ieee “We like to think we're right up there with the best communities in the province,” said Baldry in an inter- view with the Lumberworker in Octo- ber 1998. He said that like any other munic- ipally driven enterprises in Ontario, the Peterborough recycling operation has been hit by government down- loading. Only 5 years ago the Min- istry of Environment funded up to 50% of the operating costs for munic- ipal recycling programs. There were also some dollars from industries (the soft drink industry and newspaper makers) to offset some of the costs. “That has all gone away so now municipalities are faced with bearing the total cost and unfortunately the moneys that we get for our recy- clables don’t cover the costs of the operation,” said Baldry. At the same time, Baldry pointed out that by recycling the city is sav- ing the cost of picking up additional landfill. Southern Ontario cities like Peter- borough act as an important supply of recycled fibre for recycled paper mills in the province, such as the Spruce Falls mill in Kapuskasing. That mill supplies markets in the U.S. which have legislated recycled content rules. “We're like the urban forest sup- porting the north,” said Baldry. One problem facing communities like Peterborough and company’s like Scott’s Plains is the sae Prices they are paid for newsprint. Baldry said that in recent years, the value of finished newsprint has fluctuated between $500-8700 per ton. At the same time recycled newsprint buyers have offered between $0 - $300 per ton. “Only the newsprint industry ple themselves could explain ae wide variation...other industries could never accept that kind of fluc- tuation in the price of their raw mate- rials,” added Baldry. 32/LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER, 1999