A coalition of powerful business stakeholder groups, – including Canadian newspapers and the BC Chamber of Commerce – are urging the provincial government to “rethink” its plan to operate the province’s blue box recycling program that is ready to start up in local communities in May.

The new provincial stewardship organization called Multi-Materials British Columbia (MMBC) is scheduled to take over BC’s recycling program on May 19.

Several business stakeholders have launched a public and media campaign urging Premier Christy Clark and her government to delay implementation of the MMBC program until receiving additional input from the province’s business community.

Newspapers Canada and a group of eight business associations representing tens of thousands of BC small businesses and their employees have launched a series of advertisements to inform the public about the new recycling plan.

The campaign is being called #RethinkitBC and is one of the largest public awareness campaigns mounted in this province’s history.

John Winter, president of the BC Chamber of Commerce, didn’t pull any punches when discussing the impact of MMBC on the roughly 3,000 businesses that will be impacted by the program.
“The whole thing has been an exercise in how not to do things,” he said. “There has been absolutely no consultation except for firing off threatening letters to businesses that if they don’t comply, they will face stiff fines.”

The 3,000 businesses that will pay fees to MMBC “are being treated in a way that I feel is repulsive and that will render many of these businesses as non-competitive,” he said. “We’re looking at businesses closing and layoffs. The entire system doesn’t seem to make any business sense or economic sense,” Winter said.

The provincial government has exempted businesses with less than $1 million gross sales and businesses that annually produce less than one tonne of packaging and printed paper (PPP). The exceptions are franchises, chains and businesses operating under a banner.

As a result, more than 27,000 PPP producer businesses and 99 per cent of all BC businesses have been exempted, said Winter.

Winter reacted angrily when informed MMBC managing director Allen Langdon suggests the BC business community has been consulted extensively about the program and its implementation.

“I can state without fear or revocation that if he insists there has been extensive consultation on this matter, he’s not telling the truth,” said Winter.

“I’m the president of a chamber that represents 36,000 businesses in this province and not one person from MMBC has ever spoken to us. Not one.”

Langdon strongly disagrees with business leaders who suggest there hasn’t been sufficient consultation about the MMBC program.

“There has been more than two years of consultation … we have had information on our website and used multiple platforms to provide constant upgrades about our plans,” he said.

MMBC was formed after provincial ministers of environment agreed each province should expand its recycling efforts back in 2011, said Langdon.

MMBC is a not-for-profit stewardship program that will dramatically increase the amount of packaged and printed paper that will be recycled in this province, he said.

No single business or sector has to join MMBC and the newspaper and printing industries are free to organize and operate their own recycling program,  he said.

The newspaper industry “has been one of the most subsidized” business sectors in Canada over the past 20 years, said Langdon.

MMBC has signed contracts with 67 municipal governments and collected more than $85 million in fees from businesses across the province and is ready to distribute 66,000 blue boxes on May 19 and eventually expand the program to 1.25 million households in BC, said Langdon.

The Town of Oliver has jumped on board.

Municipal Manager Tom Szalay sees the MMBC program as a step in shifting responsibility away from the taxpayer and onto the manufacturer/consumer for packaging and printed paper.

“That is, let printed paper and packaging producers and consumers look after and pay for their products including final disposal, rather than having local taxpayers pay for it.”

For example, if someone buys a minimum of blister-packaged consumer goods, no newspapers, and buys food in bulk with a minimum of packaging, why should he pay for the cost of such paper and packaging (through taxes)?” Szalay asked.

In the past, the cost of disposing old newsprint has fallen to local taxpayers through the fees they paid at the landfill (either at the gate or on their taxes), Szalay said.

But in more recent years, senior governments have implemented product responsibility programs where the producers and consumers of products must look after the life-cycle costs of these products, including ultimate disposal, he pointed out.

Bonnie Dancey, CEO of the South Okanagan Chamber of Commerce, said she sent a notice about the pending implementation of the MMBC program in the summer of 2013 and she didn’t receive a single call about its impact.

“I don’t think our membership really knows anything about it,” she said.

Dancey agreed that MMBC officials did a very poor job of consulting with the business community considering this is a program that will affect millions of BC residents.

Osoyoos Mayor Stu Wells said he and members of council “are quite satisfied” with the deal they have signed with MMBC.

“From a municipal standpoint, we don’t foresee any problems with it,” he said. “They’re increasing the amount of things they want to recycle and keep out of the landfill and that’s our goal as a municipality.”

John Hinds, president of Newspapers Canada, said this program is deeply flawed and punishes certain business sectors extremely hard and will not accomplish the goal to reduce the amount of PPP in provincial landfills.

“This program will lead to closures and mergers … and take an industry already battling many challenges and introduce higher costs our industry simply can’t absorb,” Hinds said. “The reality is if this program moves forward as designed, newspapers are going to close and a lot of people are going to lose their jobs.”

MMBC will charge newspapers $240 per tonne to collect and recycle newsprint, which is unfair to an industry “that has been the superstar of recycling” over the past 70 years, said Hinds.

Keith Lacey

Special to the Chronicle