The City of Dauphin is hoping operational changes at the residential recycling drop off location on First Avenue Southeast will improve conditions at the facility.
From now on, the depot will accept only cardboard.
“This is in response to ongoing misuse, contamination, and illegal dumping that were making the site increasingly difficult and costly to maintain,” City deputy manager Lisa Gaudet said.
“The residential recycling depot was originally intended as a convenient option for residents to drop off recyclable materials, but over time, staff have observed increasing contamination of recycling bins and significant misuse of the site. So materials that didn’t belong at the recycling depot were regularly being left at the location, including household garbage, broken toilets, appliances, and other discarded items.”
Staff, she said, were spending valuable time cleaning up the site and the depot was quickly becoming an eyesore.
“The condition of the site was becoming a concern,” Gaudet said.
“The site, it’s in a fairly visible location. It doesn’t reflect well in the city to have a depot with garbage strewn about.”
The operational changes are meant to preserve the service and monitoring will take place to see if simplifying the operation reduces the contamination.
Cardboard needs to be flattened before being placed in the bins and all other recyclable materials need to be placed in the residential curbside recycling bins for collection.
“We know that there’s still a risk of non-recyclable items being discarded there, but this will allow us to evaluate whether a more focused service can be maintained successfully,” Gaudet said.
“Our goal is to maintain a recycling option for residents, but that requires the facility to be used as it’s intended.”