NEWS PHOTO COLLIN GALLANT A distinctive E360s truck runs its route picking up curbside recycling bins in the community of Riverside in Medicine Hat on Wednesday afternoon. The company and city are ending their contract, it was announced this week.
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
The head of a company that currently picks up blue cart recycling in the City of Medicine Hat says he wishes the city well in its search for a lower cost option, adding however, that he still considers talks with the city ongoing.
Danny Ardellini is the head of Environment 360 Services, also known as E360s, and says he considers the working relationship with city utility department “great” but the value of recycled material for reprocessing has dropped.
That forms a critical part of his income along with a fee collected on utility bills, and he won’t continue to operate at a “dramatic” loss, he said.
“The is a bid based on the commodity market, and the commodity markets aren’t there anymore,”said Ardellini, whose company also earns a fee collected on utility bills.
“This isn’t a Medicine Hat-E360s issue – it’s a global issue affecting all of North America.”
He said the drop in prices is the result of the closure of China to certain types of material, including low-grade paper and plastics.
This week the city utility department announced the two sides had been discussing updating the contract, but were “unable to arrive at a mutually satisfactory agreement for recycling services.”
“Can Pak has subsequently given notice of its intent to cease service delivery,” states a release.
Officials told the News they are in discussions with other waste management firms and could have one in place by the end of October, after potentially re-tendering the contract.
They consider waste diversion critical to extending the lifespan of the landfill, and curbside pickup as a way to increase volume.
Environmental utilities general manager Lora Brenan told the News that raising fees too high or interrupting the service might frustrate residents.
“Kudos to Medicine Hat … I give them all the credit in the world for not folding it up,” said Ardellini. “They think they can get it done at a cheaper rate, at the end of the day they’re trying to do best for the Medicine Hat rate payers, and I’m all for that.
“As a company we are sustaining dramatic losses, and just can’t afford to keep running (at a) loss because of the commodity market.”
The original contract was awarded to provider CanPak in late 2018.
As part of the original deal, CanPak purchased the city’s material sorting facility, with the income used to purchase the blue carts used by about 26,000 residences in town. The city holds a first option to buy back the facility if it is sold, but Brenan suggested a new contract provider would likely truck volumes to other centres for more detailed sorting for still marketable material.
When the service began in mid-2018, residents were charged a new fee of $6.31 for the home pickup service, though other fees were reduced, leading to a net change of $2.89 during an average month.
This spring, the City of Lacombe recently halted blue cart collection by E360s, suggesting in talks it required a 66 per cent fee increase in light of the global marketplace for recyclables.
