A $15-million container recycling facility is coming to New Westminster, and Multi-Material B.C. says it will bring prosperity to the city.
The 179,000-square-foot facility is set to open in 2015 on Gifford Street in Queensborough.
Multi-Material B.C. has chosen Green By Nature, a partnership between Cascades Recovery Inc., Emterra Environmental and Merlin Plastics, to manage operations.
When the facility was first announced, Green By Nature was reluctant to provide details on the location, but The Recordhas learned the facility will be on an existing site in Queensborough across the street from the Starlight Casino. “The owner of the site just wants to make sure everything is good to go,” Vivian Leung, vice-president of corporate administration for Green By Nature, confirmed.
At this time there is no timeline for when construction will begin, as Green By Nature is still finalizing the purchase. Once it’s complete, Green By Nature would begin hiring workers.
“It will be a brand-new facility, not a relocation of a facility, so there will be both skilled and unskilled jobs that are going to be employed there and also a number of jobs during the construction phase and also long-term positions,” Leung says.
When the facility opens next year, Leung says Green By Nature intends to work with local recycling companies, including New Westminster’s Urban Impact.
“They (Urban Impact) are going to be working with our company in a recycling capacity. Exactly what that capacity is hasn’t been finalized yet so I can’t say too much, unfortunately,” she says.
But Nicole Stefenelli, Urban Impact’s founder and CEO, says she hasn’t spoken with anyone from Green By Nature.
“We’re not in partnership. There’s three companies that are acting together in partnership – Merlin, Cascades and Emterra,” she says. “They will probably be using other companies to subcontract services.”
Stefenelli wouldn’t comment further but stressed she hadn’t spoken to Leung or Green By Nature.
The facility’s impact on truck traffic is another concern, but Leung says Green By Nature is very aware of the issue and will do everything it can to reduce its impact.
“We have a handful of measures that we’re going to be putting in place to manage that truck traffic and logistics. Instead of small trucks going to the facility, we’re going to be using a number of smaller locations throughout the province to kind of consolidate the materials so that things are compacted and bailed so you can put more into long-haul trailers rather than having a lot of trucks coming in,” she says.
Leung adds that Green By Nature does not want its trucks sitting in traffic for long periods of time. To ensure this doesn’t happen, the company will be running its trucks through New Westminster during off-peak hours to avoid the congestion.
“Travel costs are things that we have to bear as costs as well, so it doesn’t make sense for us to be wanting to sit in traffic; that just works out bad for everybody,” she adds.
