While the Crop Protection Institute focuses on a pilot project that asks farmers in Saskatchewan to return empty farm chemical containers to dealers rather than dropping them at designated sites, critics are sizing up the Manitoba disposal model.
“We have a system in place in Manitoba that has the lowest rate of dirty containers in the country. It is cost effective and uses the current rural waste stream to handle the jugs,” said Bernie Tiessen, an agricultural retailer and president of the Canadian Association of Agricultural Retailers.
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The pilot project in Saskatchewan, the system favored by CPI, is nothing new. It is already running in six provinces outside the Prairies. Chemical retailers there accept empty, clean, dry containers from farmers and send them to contractors for recycling or disposal.
CPI started the Saskatchewan project in 1997 and today has 140 dealers in the program. There are 600 dealers in the province.
If the pilot project can win over critics, CPI hopes to adopt the system across the Prairies.
“We have had success with it in other pro-vinces and with modifications it should work on the Prairies as well,” said Paul Cook of CPI.
But there is resistance.
Some members of CAAR, municipal associations and the Western Grain Elevators Association question the validity of the project, and point to the collection program in Manitoba as the model they prefer.
Tiessen said his association polled its membership, which includes most chemical retailers, and by a ratio of five to one, respondents wanted a system similar to Manitoba’s collection service of staffed collection sites.
In Saskatchewan, disposal sites are not staffed and many containers are returned uncleaned, which poses an environmental risk.
As well, Tiessen said the task of collecting empty pesticide containers poses different problems for prairie dealers than those outside the West. Saskatchewan uses more pesticides than any other province in the nation, has the most collections sites, about 270, with the greatest distances between them.
CAAR complains that creating more collection sites at retail outlets will raise chances of contamination. A town sharing a municipal collection point with a neighboring community could find itself with three or more sites under the CPI proposed system, as dealers set up their own collection facilities.
Keith Carlton of SARM said farmers living in isolated areas aren’t likely to make special trips to drop off empty containers.
“It is one thing to have to pick up the chemical. It is another to drive a tandem load of empties back to that dealer when you have a municipal dump only a few miles away.”
Carlton added CPI studies of dealer returns in the Saskatchewan test projects are not representative of the province.
“What about the fact that CPI is paying the dealers about 10 cents a container to handle them? We (rural municipalities) used to get 10 cents, then it was cut to five, to a maximum of $500 and then we were cut off.
“As municipalities, I think we are going to need some sort of tandem system that allows for a dealer return and municipal sites. If they are going to fund the dealers to look after returns, then they should fund us as well.”
SARM has also called into question the type of participants in the test program, saying the majority are custom applicators or have custom applicator businesses that need to deal with containers as a part of business anyway.
Leave it to retailers
But a consultant who has participated in the debate over pesticide containers for years feels many rural municipalities want to return to a retail collection system.
“There are some RMs that would like nothing better than to close their collection sites and never have to see another container again,” said Barry Anderson, a consultant for CPI working on the trial program in Saskatchewan.
Two groups made up of participants in the trial program and members from the WGEA, rural municipal associations, retailers and CPI have been formed to evaluate the project and other options.
“We expect to hear back in the third week of October.”
Municipal collection points in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan will remain open while CPI evaluates the trial results.
