Spring has arrived at the Hornby Island Recycling depot, and we are getting ready for the 2024 season of visitors to our little island. Many of them visited us during the month of March and we noticed many new faces.
The Free Store Volunteers would like to request that only items that are in excellent working order are brought to the Free Store. We had to discard seven backhoe buckets, roughly seven yards, of donations that were beyond re-using, repurposing, or recycling this month.
We wanted to remind all our returning spring and summer residents that our tipping fee prices were raised by $1.00 per bag across the board at the beginning of the year. This was to align with the CVRD price increase at their landfill.
Please note that as of November 2023 we have been collecting used cooking oil which can be dropped off on Fridays at our Product-Care centre.
We hope to receive CVRD approval for this year’s operating budget by May 2024.
We are still looking to establish a “We-Store” construction materials repurposing yard, and we hope to receive materials to erect a fence to enclose the repurposing yard after the CVRD budget approval. Note that we are still looking for volunteers to help erect said fencing. Once the fencing is installed, we also will need an on-site volunteer crew, so we can collect useful construction and demolition waste for repurposing again.
A reminder that we still have Earth Machine composters available at a price of only $115.00, taxes included.
As more stringent environmental regulations were introduced this February, we are introducing contingency /emergency plans for our household hazardous waste streams. We will be required to hold emergency training events. These events may be scheduled during regular business hours which would mean depot closure during the emergency exercises. We are looking into the budgetary impact of having these exercises scheduled during the days the depot would be regularly closed. We are also required to protect streams, such as electric appliances and electronics, that have been previously left outside and exposed to the environment. Thus, the CVRD has started to build an addition to the recycling building to house our electronics and electrical appliances which are representing the fastest growing recycling stream in Canada. These items are now classified as medium risk materials and need to be protected from the weather.
It is important, when wanting to drop off drywall, to call ahead to confirm our drywall bin is on the island and that there is room for what you want to drop. More than once we needed to send a patron home with a load of drywall because our drywall bin was not on the island. Also make sure you have filled out the required paperwork available at http://hirra.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Dry-Wall-Waste-Disposal-Application-March-2017.pdf.
Also, when planning to drop off large loads of construction waste, please call ahead to ensure that there is sufficient space in our waste bins for what you are planning to bring.
Lastly, we want to take the opportunity to thank our hardworking staff, at HIRRA and the Recycling Depot, our volunteers in the Free Store, in the gardens, the recycling committee, and the HIRRA executive for all their contributions to making our depot run so smoothly.
……See you all up on depot hill.
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