We have said goodbye to the summer season and have returned to our regular opening hours, Fridays through Sundays, 9am until 1pm. This means that we will not be open on any Thursdays until July 2026. “Catch Up Day” — often mistakenly referred to as Commercial Day — is primarily reserved for essential operational tasks such as baling materials from the previous weekend, preparing and loading shipments of recycling, and readying the recycling building for the next shift. Only a few “large volume waste generators” are welcome to visit us on “Catch Up Day”.
In October the price at the CVRD landfill, for the tipping fees of construction and demolition waste, will increase from $155 per tonne to $205 per tonne and we have to follow suit. We will be raising our construction and demolition waste prices in October to $175 for a pick-up load, and for a small pickup load to $125. In the construction waste bin only household renovation or construction materials such as shingles, insulation, vapor barrier, flooring, fiberglass tubs, toilets, vinyl siding and windows, etc. will be accepted.
Free Store traffic was extremely busy this summer. On August 14 alone, we recorded 312 patrons visiting the Free Store between 10am and 12 noon. Whereas only 86 patrons visited the Recycling Centre between 9am and 1pm. Parking was so difficult that free store patrons parked on the narrow road up to the recycling building. This of course made entering and leaving the recycling depot rather difficult.
Please note that the recycling depot currently still has an empty seat at the committee table and if you are interested in joining our committee, please let us know.
The Free Store Volunteers request that only items that are in excellent working order are brought to the Free Store. This summer we discarded at least 10 backhoe buckets of donations that were beyond re-using, repurposing, and/or recycling; that we are paying for with your taxes.
We still have many patrons coming to the recycling centre not knowing that all corrugated cardboard has to be dry and be cut down to pieces smaller than 76cm by 76cm (30 inches by 30 inches), so staff can easily process the material, and that cardboard boxes are not trampled and stomped on. Stomped on and trampled cardboard boxes will need to be un-stomped and un-trampled by staff before they can be processed. The staff really appreciate your help.
Call ahead when you want to drop off drywall, large loads of construction waste, trailers, 5th wheels, boats, or scrap metal, so we can confirm that we can accommodate you. Make sure you have filled out the required paperwork available at https://recycling.hirra.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Dry-Wall-Waste-Disposal-Application-March-2017.pdf. For trailers and boats, it is important that there are no fluids present whatsoever.
We are still waiting for the CVRD’s contractors to complete the construction of the addition to the recycling building. This space will be used to store old and broken electronics and electrical appliances before shipping them to the recycler. It will be, like the recycling storage area, off limits to the public.
Working electronics and electric appliances are collected in the Free Store for our patrons to reuse.
As always, we want to thank all our volunteers in the Free Store, in the gardens, at the recycling committee, and the HIRRA executive, for all the time that they have been donating over the years.
Finaly, we want to thank our hardworking staff, and the HIRRA staff, for their contributions to making our depot run smoothly.
……See you all up on depot hill.
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