Sep 19 at Mansons Friday Market_ Comox Strathcona Waste Management Service talks about changes coming

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents -What does the Comox Strathcona Waste Management Service update mean to Cortes residents? Rates will go up. You may be paying more if you have a project that requires a bin to remove a lot of waste, like from a construction site or a rennovation. There may be some money for the free store. There are actually 33 proposed actions, but at this point it is not clear how many will apply to us. Sarah Willie, Manager of Solid Waste Planning and Policy Development will be at this Friday’s Mansons Public Market, September 19, to talk about it. Sarah Willie: “We’re a service of the Regional District and our main goal is in waste diversion and also the management of that garbage and that recycling further along. We’re managing the landfills, transfer stations, the depots across the service area. We operate the Cortes Depot and recycling and transfer station and we’re also a big part of the Quadra upgrades that are coming up. We’ve got bins there right now and we’ve procured some land in order to build a recycling depot.” “We’re in the middle of a 10-year update of our solid waste management plan. This plan is really big-picture thinking. How are we gonna achieve that diversion increase over the next 10 years? Are we gonna preserve our landfill space? And providing opportunities for people to have input into that process. “We’re in step three now of a four-step process. We’ve been out to community a couple times over the past few years, getting from folks the goals of this process, introducing them to what we do for their community. Sometimes it’s a little bit behind the curtain. Now we’re at the point where we’ve got some strategies and some actions that have been informed by our public and technical advisory committee, as well as our board of directors. “So we’ve got 33 actions and eight strategies that we’ve grouped together and we’re bringing them to the public. We’d like to hear their input and thoughts on whether we’ve hit the mark. So we’ve got a number of events across the whole region coming up. One specifically, we wanna make sure folks are aware of, and that’s on Friday, September 19th. We’ll be joining the Cortes Island Farmer’s Market from noon till three. We’ll have a tent set up there. Myself and my colleague Lindsay will be there to introduce the concepts to folks and to answer any questions. “We’ve also got a lot of online opportunities for engagement. Up until October 16th, you can go to www.cssw.ca/swmp — that stands for Solid Waste Management Plan — and complete our online survey for a chance to win a hundred dollars in groceries.”