Click here to sign my petition calling on the Auditor General to review MMBC.
UPDATE
Both the Times Colonist and the Black Press local papers picked up on this story. Visit the links to read more:
Times Colonist, Sept 9 2014
New provincial recycling program killed Central Saanich firm, says ex-GM
Peninsula News Review, August 30 2014
Starved of Plastics, Syntal Products on Keating closes
 |
| Syntal General Manager Brian Burchill and MLA Lana Popham, August 2014 |
The provincial government continues to push forward with recycling regulations that are bad for the environment and bad for local business. In fact, the BC Liberals are breaking small businesses in the recycling sector by gifting a monopoly over residential recycling to a handful of mega-corporations.
Example number one is the recent closure
of Syntal Products, located on Keating Cross Road.
Over the last sixteen years Syntal has allowed residents to drop-off used hard plastics at no charge for recycling. Syntal took in thousands of tons of the stuff, diverting it from the Hartland Landfill. The company uses innovative green technology to transform the material into all-plastic lumber, which never rots and, because it is non-toxic, is a
more-environmentally responsible product than chemically treated wood.
According to Syntal’s General Manager, Brian Burchill, 60% of their supply of residential
plastics was cut off the day the MMBC program started. The company was not longer viable and has now been shut down and sold to a business in another province.
MMBC is demanding that all materials
collected are siphoned off to specific big businesses it selects. That is why smaller operations like Syntal are being shut-down and why small
businesses across the whole sector are very concerned about being pushed
under.
The closure of Syntal is a significant
loss: thanks to the monopolistic practices of MMBC, enabled by the provincial
government, we have lost good local jobs, a great and green local business and
an environmentally-friendly system to locally handle and reuse plastic waste.
I’m extremely concerned for the future of
our BC recycling businesses. The BC Liberals claims they are pro-business, but
here is an example of them meddling with the free market to ensure large
corporations can profit from the residential recycling sector. Ultimately it is
the environment and the people of BC who will be worse off.
MMBC, a contentious and much-criticized residential recycling program, was introduced by the BC Liberal Government and came into effect this spring. It is controlled by the Ontario-based
Canadian Stewardship Services Alliance’s board of directors, which includes
representation from Unilever Canada, Metro, Walmart, Tim Hortons, Loblaw
Companies, Coca-Cola Canada and Procter & Gamble.
Please click here for background on this issue.
Lana
Please click here for background on this issue.
Lana
