In a startling revelation Monday evening, council members were told that the City of Whitehorse has never approached the Raven Recycling Society with an offer to pay the society more if it would keep its depot open until the territorial Extended Producer Responsibility legislation kicks in next year.
Council has been agonizing over the situation for months following an announcement from the society that it would close its drop-off bins in September, partly as a way to pressure the city into establishing some kind of curbside collection program for recycling.
That announcement came last year. The centre had originally been slated to stop taking plastics, cans, paper and cardboard by the end of 2023.
Raven then backed off on that deadline, giving the city some more breathing space. It has since announced the centre will primarily become a depository for refundables on Sept. 15.
On Monday, Mayor Laura Cabott asked municipal staff members whether the city had ever broached the subject directly with Raven.
The answer was no.
She was told the Yukon government might have had that discussion with Raven, but the city had not.
“We’re putting all this effort into providing a service for a year-and-a-half,” Cabott said. “It’s a needed service; no one wants to see this stuff going into that landfill.
“My question is: did we ever, in the discussions, go back to Raven and propose paying them more, through more diversion credits, to get the city through this gap?”
Cabott suggested that such an arrangement would leave the city with unhampered recycling services with it having to provide an interim service that will be costly and temporary.
Staff members said they were under a clear impression that Raven would have rejected such a proposal, but acknowledged the question was never formally posed to the organization.
Not surprisingly, that led to a few more questions.
Cabott said, “I’m asking this question because it was never very clear when they were going to stop providing this service. Now we find out – I think the date is Sept. 15 – just from my view here, there was a little bit of room there that Raven was creating and continuing to provide this service and I think it sure would have been helpful if everybody – Raven, the Yukon government and the city – would have pursued this to provide another year or year-and-a-half of this service.”
“What council is being asked to do here is to fill in a gap,” she said.
That gap, she explained, is a period of up to 18 months for the city to provide some kind of recycling services before producers and manufacturers have to introduce a new system which they will pay for. That’s part of the Extended Producer Responsibility the government is introducing.
The city has made it clear over the last several months it’s leery of the expense of such a temporary system.
“Raven is going to stop providing that service, and it’s been a great service for Whitehorse residents,” the mayor said. “Then somebody else has to provide that service, at their cost. Council has been left to find a way to figure out that gap.”
Cabott also stressed she isn’t in favour of whatever solution the city came up with, coming without some kind of user fees or being added to property taxes.
She compared the situation to garbage collection, where residents do pay for the system through taxation.
Heather Ashthorn, Raven’s executive director, spoke to The Yukon Star this morning about the situation. She said she had watched the presentation to council last night, and had some thoughts on the situation.
Ashthorn confirmed the city had never made such an offer to the society.
“It was an expected question, but the answer is no (it never came from the city).”
While she said she wasn’t initially surprised at that, she was a bit surprised it didn’t come forward at some point.
Ashthorn said she believed the city had some trouble grasping the nature of what Raven had announced, and was looking in different directions when it came to developing a strategy to handle it.
“I don’t think they were prepared.”
Such an offer to increase funding might have made a difference early on, she said, and certainly would have been “very welcome” in past decades.
However, Raven is now committed to its stance.
“We are where we need to be,” Ashthorn said. “It’s time for the city to raise the bar.”
It’s now not about the money for Raven, she added.
“That’s not what we’re after here.”
