Curbside recycling pickup in Benito has been discontinued since the end of August.
According to the Municipality of Swan Valley West, Benito residents must now deposit their recyclables into the bins on the east side of the Benito Maintenance Shop at 87 Railway Ave.
Grant Schneider, chair of the Local Urban District (LUD) Committee for Benito, says that it had to be discontinued because they didn't have the financial means to sustain it and that they weren't able to properly budget for recycling pickup because they were missing critical information, including what the rates would be from OSS, the waste management company that serves the area.
"We never got any hardcore evidence of what we were going to get [back from the government] for our MSN tipping fees... They basically are going to give us $5,000 out of whatever grants we're going to get from that, so we can't really sustain [a recycling program] when last year, our cost was $38,000 to have recycling pickup in Benito," he adds.
According to Schneider, they also explored the idea of transitioning to picking up recycling once a month, instead of twice a month.
"We were struggling to understand what it was going to cost. We [didn't] know what the additional fuel surcharges were going to be. Nobody gave us information in regards to that, so that we can make a proper decision on how to go about it...Even at... $40,000 and there [are 200] households in Benito... each person would have to pay an additional $200 for curbside pickup," he adds.
Schneider went on to say that it would be unreasonable to go ahead with that, since most Benito residents are seniors living on a fixed income.
He also points out that although residents are able to bring their recyclables to the maintenance shop themselves, many seniors living in the area would struggle to get them there.
Furthermore, Grant Schneider believes that the amalgamation of the former Village of Benito into the Municipality of Swan Valley West has made it more difficult to get funding.
"It makes it tough on these little communities to run the programs... If you don't get the proper grants, like we did when we used to be the Village, of course, it makes it harder to facilitate these programs [and] make them run," he adds.
Schneider says that curbside recycling pickup could return to Benito in the future, but there are no concrete plans for that at this time.
