Multi-Material British Columbia (MMBC) submitted a Packaging and Printed Paper (PPP) Stewardship Plan to the Ministry of Environment (MOE) on November 19, 2012, as required by the Recycling Regulation. MMBC continued to receive comments on the PPP Stewardship Plan until December 14, 2012.
MMBC has updated the November 19, 2012 PPP Stewardship Plan to clarify aspects that were the focus of written submissions received between November 12 and December 14, 2012 and to clarify how the plan addresses requirements of the Recycling Regulation in response to questions posed by representatives of the MOE.
MMBC re-submitted the updated PPP Stewardship Plan to the MOE on February 25, 2013 for approval.
The updated plan clarifies the definition of multi-family buildings by explicitly excluding:
- Single family dwellings with suites and/or laneway houses;
- Converted single family dwellings,
- Duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes; and
- Institutional and commercial buildings.
The updated plan also clarifies that MMBC will conduct research to establish a resident awareness benchmark and a resident awareness target and will implement a process to develop a data tracking and modeling system for greenhouse gas emissions.
The updated plan clarifies that all PPP supplied into BC households will be addressed through a combination of collection services and research and development activities. Based on available composition data of PPP collected and the garbage stream, it is estimated that approximately 97% of the PPP supplied into BC households will be targeted for collection and approximately 3% will be the focus of research and development activities which will include:
- Working with stewards to modify the design of the unrecyclable PPP;
- Working with post-collection service providers to modify processing equipment and/or sorting systems to effectively segregate the unrecyclable PPP so that the quality of the remaining PPP is not compromised;
- Working with end-markets to adjust material specifications so that the unrecyclable PPP can be marketed with other PPP; and/or
- Working with end-markets to develop new end-uses so that the PPP that is currently unrecyclable can be marketed.
The updated plan also includes a transition strategy for MMBC contracts with local governments that accept the market-clearing price where the local governments contract for PPP collection services[1] and their contracts expire after the May 2014 launch of the PPP Stewardship Plan. MMBC will align the expiry date of the contract between MMBC and the local government to the expiry date of the contract between the local government and its collection contractor. Alignment of contract expiry dates allows the local government to consider its options at the expiry of its collection contract. One of the options would be to retender the collection service and continue to accept the market-clearing price under a new contract with MMBC.
For multi-family buildings, the contract transition strategy applies to local governments that utilize their bylaw authority to mandate payment by multi-family buildings for local government PPP collection services and the collection services are delivered by a contractor. During the term of the transition contract, MMBC will not qualify other multi-family building collectors to operate within the local government service area. This allows the local government to meet its existing collection contract obligations and provides an opportunity to consider approaches other than mandatory payment to confirm multi-family building participation for its next tender for PPP multi-family building collection service.
For ease of reference, the updated plan summarizes PPP collection services to be provided under the PPP Stewardship Plan in relation to PPP collection services currently available and summarizes the plan’s performance measures and associated reporting.