REGINA - Weyburn city council has made a decision on what model to use going forward in line with the provincial changes coming to recycling collection .
The province is transitioning to a full extended producer responsibility model, under changes approved last year by the Ministry of Environment.
As part of that change, Weyburn is going with a Community Led Collection Model under Phase 1 of that transition.
Under this model the City of Weyburn will maintain operational control over curbside recycling while receiving funding from SK Recycles. But the annual rebate per household would decrease from $42 to $38.
The decision was approved at Weyburn council Monday night at City Hall. According to a city memo circulated at Monday’s meeting, council had three potential options. A second option was to go with a full program-led collection model, with SK Recycles responsible for all aspects of curbside and multi family collection services. The third option would have continued for the time being with the current shared-responsibility model.
But the recommendation from administration was to move ahead right away with the first option of a community-led collection model. It means the city would sign a new agreement with SK Recycles as a contracted collection provider and be fully responsible for material management (procurement of service provider, public awareness, reporting, contamination reduction/not-accepted material, etc). SK Recycles will also pay Weyburn the rebate of $38/curbside household per year.
The Community Led option will launch with Phase 1 in May of 2025.
Weyburn is one of a number of communities across the province impacted by the decision by Saskatchewan to move to what is called an “Extended Producer Responsibility” model for recycling, where responsibility for recycling household packaging and paper is transferred from municipalities to producers.
At the moment the current model in place in the province is the program operated by the non-profit Multi- Material Stewardship Western. The City of Weyburn is one of the communities who currently have an agreement with Multi- Material Stewardship Western.
According to the SK Recycles website, under that previous model there is shared responsibility between producers and municipalities across the province. Producers provide up to 75 per cent of net program costs under this program, with local governments would use their own programs.
The transition currently under way is to move to a full SK Recycles extended producer responsibility program over a three-year transition period running through 2027. The new program would be 100 per cent managed by producers, with full operational and financial responsibility for collecting and recycling household packaging and paper products.
Local governments and private collection contractors would then partner with SK Recycles for collection, and SK Recycles would then make sure the materials are recycled.
This provincewide transition is happening under a phased approach that began last November. According to the memo from the City of Weyburn, Phase 1 focuses on the largest communities with curbside and multi family collection, while Phase 2 later this year would focus on smaller communities. Phase 3 would focus on depot collection and would begin Dec. 2026. The full transition is expected to be completed by Dec. 1, 2027.
