There appears to be a light at the end of the recycling tunnel as far as pricing is concerned.
Chair of Owen Sound’s Waste Management Committee Bill Twaddle says it appears the price for recycled material is slowly rising again.
In the last half of 2008 the price for recycling plunged to the point the city was getting hardly anything and was looking at a loss of revenue in the 300 thousand dollar range.
Twaddle says market now has appeared to have hit bottom and there are signs of price improvements.
He says Owen Sound was very fortunate that it still has a market for this material so they didn’t have to store it until its value increased.
Twaddle says the reason the city was able to get rid of its material is the way its collected and sorted by both homeowners and Miller Waste.
He says the less contaminated the recyclable material is, the more value it has and the commodities that Owen Sound is selling is described as a very clean product and is in demand ahead of what is coming from other municipalities.
Twaddle also says the cities diversion rate for recycling is about 51 per cent one of the best in the Province.
He credits that high figure on the implementation of bag tags and a blue box program that accepts far more recyclable material than a lot of other communities.