Saskatoon’s Environment Committee suggests provincial entity govern recycling operations starting 2028

Loraas, Cosmopolitan Industries, and the City of Saskatoon will lose their involvement in Saskatoon’s recycling operations if a deal is struck between the City and SK Recycles.

Last May, the Ministry of Environment approved SK Recycles’ ‘Household Packaging and Paper Stewardship Program Plan’. This allows SK Recycles to take additional responsibility for both collection and recycling in municipalities across the province. Municipalities were asked to get on board with this shift by December 1st, 2027.

Because there are existing contractual requirements for blue carts and compost depots, Administration recommended maintaining the status quo with no changes to both the curbside and multi-unit residential programs until December of 2027. After that date, the City has the choice to transition to a City-Led recycling program, or a SK Recycles Led Collection Model.

Following Tuesday’s meeting, Saskatoon’s Environment, Utilities and Corporate Services Committee voted in favour of submitting intent to participate in the SK Recycles Led Collection Model as the long-term approach for the curbside recycling program. This would begin January 1, 2028.

Saskatoon’s Director of Water and Waste Operations, Brendan Lemke, explains what adopting the SK Recycles Led Collection Model would look like.

“In this option, SK Recycles would provide collections, education, customer service, and processing. The City no longer has a role and therefor would have no requirement for reporting and no payments from SK Recycles…The City would also no longer control service levels for recycling, including acceptable materials, collections dates, frequency, etc.,” he explains.

Lemke says the current Loraas collection contract expires on December 31st, 2027, and the Cosmopolitan Industries processing contract doesn’t expire until 2029. Because SK Recycles would be taking over by December 1st of 2027, this creates a two-year overlap that needs to be figured out.

“The multi-unit contract (Cosmo.) includes recycling depot processes, and the processing of materials from some of our City facilities, so that contract is not as easy to break apart if it was to be broken apart.”

On the bright side, allowing SK Recycles to govern Saskatoon’s recycling operations would eliminate the recycling fee on residents’ utility bills. City Council will still need to approve the change before the shift takes place.