With Council approving an amended waste management bylaw at Monday's (March 20) City Council meeting, changes are coming to waste removal in Airdrie.

The new bylaw takes effect April 1. When it does, the City will officially kick off its curbside recycling program, which will join the organic program and multi-family recycling program already in place.

Under the new bylaw, residents of Airdrie will be limited to one bag of garbage each week. Extra bag tags will still be available for purchase, and there will be exemptions for families with medical concerns or children in diapers.

Residents will have to apply for either a diaper or a medical exemption by signing a declaration of need. The diaper exemption is only available to families with two or more children under the age of four. Medical information will not be required, nor will you need to show a birth certificate for your child. However, if you are applying for the diaper exemption, you will need to state the name and age of your children. Applicants for either exemption will recieve six months worth of extra bag tags. Both exemptions will need to be reapplied for every six months.

Susan Grimm, Team Leader for Waste and Recycling at the City of Airdrie, says they are hard at work getting the forms and application process ironed out.

"The biggest thing that we would ask for right now from the residents is just a little bit of patience. The very first time council saw it was yesterday. So now that we have direction on how to move forward, we have to put all of their suggestions and changes in place and get the forms ready. They will be uploaded online, the process will be uploaded online, and we're doing our best because we obviously want to have that in place for April 1."

The most controversial portion of the new bylaw, a requirement for clear bags, was struck down by council. However, under the new bylaw, the City will be conducting garbage audits throughout the upcoming year to make sure residents are complying with all of the new programs, and that all items are being disposed of in the appropriate manner. Grimm says that opaque bags don't mean you can throw out whatever you want.

"Council took this step in order to allow residents to do the right thing. So we have the green bin, we have the blue bin, and now it's going to be up to residents of the city to make sure that all of the material is being diverted properly and consistently."

Council did leave open the possibility that if residents are found to be overwhelmingly non-compliant, clear bags will be revisited.

Finally, the new bylaw sets out a number of fines for non-compliance, but the City does not anticipate handing any out. As mentioned at the Council meeting, those fines have never been issued in the past, and are a very last resort after a series of steps to deal with non-compliance.

 

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