QWS Overview
Since 1990
Service Area: Member Municipalities
How We Do What We Do
Funding to operate these diversion programs in the area comes from three sources. Municipal funding through your property taxes, revenue from the materials collected and sold as well as funding received by Industry Funding Organizations (IFO) who levy fees from product stewards (manufacturers and 1st Importers). This is referred to as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). There are separate stewards for each of the Blue Box, Municipal Hazardous and Special Waste program, and the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Programs.
The amounts of funding municipalities receive from Industry Funding Organizations is based on tonnages collected from the previous year reported to Waste Diversion Ontario.
Our Recycling Plant
Our recycling plant as it is commonly known is actually a Material Recovery Facility, or MRF for short, and is located at 270 West Street in Trenton, Ontario.
Construction of the facility was completed in 1990 and it was initially designed to process close to 8,000 metric tonnes of recycling annually. Since upgrading the facility it can now process approximately 15,000 metric tonnes a year.
The Material Recovery Facility is designed to run two separate sort lines. One line is designated to sort the mixed paper materials into separate categories while the other line sorts mixed plastic and metal containers. Because of this design, we ask residents to sort their recycling into these two categories: papers and paper products into one blue box, and plastic and metal containers into another.
Some larger facilities have expensive automated sorting equipment that sorts the recycling with high-tech lasers and blasts of air combined with magnets and other specialized equipment. Here at our facility, we have people that sort the recycling by hand. This human element stresses the importance of making sure no harmful materials end up in your blue box.
The fully sorted material is then baled and sold to companies who recycle this material into new and useful products we all use everyday. The sale of this material is used to help offset the operating cost of the blue box recycling program.
