Whitehorse ups cardboard dump fee to curb waste

The City of Whitehorse is going to more than triple the amount it costs to dispose of cardboard, in an attempt to cut down the amount of needless cardboard that ends up at the local dump.

As part of the city's wide-ranging plans to cut down on waste, the operations committee says businesses will soon have to pay a lot more to bring cardboard to the landfill to be disposed of.

Starting next year, the cost to dump 1 tonne of cardboard will be $250. That's more than three times the current fee, $69.

"We see about 1,500 tonnes a year going into the landfill," Dave Albisser with the operations committee says. "A lot of the commercial sector contains a lot of cardboard."

The city hopes the fee hike will encourage businesses to be smarter about how much cardboard they need and use. Recycling facilities in the city do accept cardboard, so there's little excuse for so much of it to end up wasted at the dump.

The city is changing the fees by declaringcardboard a "controlled waste" which falls under a different category of fees than regular garbage. Fees for regular waste are also increasingto $86a tonne.