WHEREAS the Minister of Environment approved a Packaging and Printed Paper Stewardship Plan that allows the producers of packaging and printed paper to achieve a province wide recovery rate of 75 and the producers can meet this recovery rate by focusing service delivery in denser and more populated regions of the province and consequently avoid service delivery in rural and small communities; AND WHEREAS many of the rural and small communities will not have access to collection services even though these communities have retail services that will be paying fees to a stewardship agency in support of the operation of collection services for residential packaging and printed paper products: THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that UBCM request that the Minister of Environment amend the Recycling Regulation to require that stewardship plans ensure that in any community where a regulated product or material is retailed to a residential consumer that collection services for these same products be made available.
Ministry of Environment The issue of rural service delivery for Extended Producer Responsibility EPR programs dates back several years and is one that the Ministry of Environment is very conscious of especially with the recent rollout of the Packaging and Printed Paper PPP EPR program being administered by Multi-Material BC MMBC. The Recycling Regulation, as it stands, does have several very specific service delivery requirements, including: a 75 percent recovery rate; the producer paying the costs of collecting and managing the products; and stewardship agencies fulfilling the performance measures within their approved stewardship plans. The regulation does not prescribe how this recovery rate will be achieved, but it is addressed in EPR plans. For PPP, a regulated 75 percent recovery rate by regional districts could have meant servicing only Prince George in the Fraser-Fort George RD, so the Ministry required MMBCs plan to address the issue of rural service delivery. To start, this meant maintaining both the provincial collection rate during the first three years of the plan and existing service levels for households currently receiving curbside or depot services. Then, as a 75 percent recovery rate requires an almost 50 percent increase in PPP materials collected and urban areas are already well serviced, rural areas may see the most new services in the future. Although for PPP these regulatory requirements and performance measures will not initially be reported to the Ministry by MMBC until January 2015, the Ministry is well-aware of service gaps that exist in many rural communities. Initial indications are that these gaps exist for a number of reasons: local jurisdictions declined the financial incentives offered by MMBC; or accepted but with conditions unacceptable to MMBC; or were too late in replying. With regard to MMBC, often the reason was: it could not secure service contractors in areas due to high costs; or its depot model did not align with current depot services offered; or it was unable to identify and attract all eligible PPP producers in time to fund a complete program rollout. Put in context, PPP is the largest and most complex EPR program in the history of BC and it is still very much in its infancy. Nonetheless, to date some 170 collection agreements are in place with local governments and other collectors across the Province that have found ways to overcome many issues with MMBC. Therefore, the Ministry has allocated additional staff and resources towards assisting both MMBC and various local governments with revisiting outstanding issues and finding common ground onto which we can collectively finish building the comprehensive program envisioned. This may involve revisiting the EPR regulation itself.