A Ladner recycler will now be processing all of Richmond’s organic materials.
It was confirmed this week that Enviro-Smart’s East Ladner processing facility will be receiving all of the City of Richmond’s organic materials starting Feb. 1.
The move means Richmond will no longer be delivering any organics to Harvest Power, a composting facility in Richmond that has been the subject of more than 1,000 public complaints and has been under much scrutiny by Metro Vancouver.
Richmond has been delivering organics from multi-family homes to Enviro-Smart since early last year. Now organics from single-family homes will be added to the mix.
Enviro Smart was acquired in 2016 by GFL (Green for Life) Environmental Inc., a Toronto-based, Canadian-owned company.
Brian King, director of operations for composting operations at GFL, said the company is excited to work with Richmond as part of its environmental program.
“The City of Richmond, as does the City of Delta, have the same materials in their organics program as all the other municipalities in the Metro Vancouver area,” said King. “The GFL-Delta facility is permitted to receive and process this material at our site. We are looking forward to being able to assist the City of Richmond in their environmental program and process their organics into high quality Grade ‘A’ compost. GFL is committed to working with our clients and communities in providing sustainable environmental solutions by constantly improving our processes and technologies.”
According to its website, Enviro-Smart accepts food waste, yard waste, soiled paper, packaged organic waste, clean wood and agriculture organics.
Meanwhile, GFL continues to work with Metro Vancouver on its air quality permit application, which Metro urged the company to apply for in the summer following an uptick in resident complaints.
That application process was last updated in November when company officials were on the hot seat at a public meeting attended by close to 200 people.
At that meeting, King said the company treats the air quality concerns expressed by the public very seriously and told residents they would be taking even more aggressive steps to address odour issues that have plagued the facility for years.
“We hope that our systems will attract no odours. I cannot guarantee that, but I can guarantee that we will taking very aggressive steps to addressing all the odour complaints that you have,” said King.
Metro spokesperson Ray Robb confirmed in an interview with the Optimist earlier this month that Metro and GFL were meeting this week to discuss the permit process further.
“We will hear what their views are. We want them to achieve a timeline and we want best available control technology for the facility,” Robb said.
With files from Daisy Xiong/Richmond News
