It was a busy day for SARCAN in Moose Jaw on June 15, as the recycling depot on Manitoba Street opened its doors to the public for the first time in almost three months.
Employees were greeted by a lineup of people, many of whom had arrived and begun queuing up before the facility opened at 9 a.m., and the line hardly diminished throughout the day.
By the afternoon, Moose Jaw SARCAN still had a lineup of people scattered throughout the parking lot, waiting together while attempting to remain several feet apart to follow public health orders.
Most patrons in line had numerous bags of recyclables with them. Some created a pile around their feet as they waited, like a small mountain of cans, bottles, and cartons. Others had their bags in shopping carts and wagons to transport them.
Prior to the reopening, SARCAN was recommending that patrons consider using the Drop & Go service, where people can label and drop their recyclables off and have the deposit delivered to them electronically, in order to avoid such long lineups.
But by 3 p.m., Moose Jaw SARCAN had closed its Drop & Go service due to an overwhelming amount of items pouring in, meaning people had no option but to wait patiently in line outside the building.
For Curtis Trevena, the long wait time was just an unmitigable fact. With near a dozen garbage bags of recycling to drop off, Trevena and his son had been waiting for over an hour when the Moose Jaw Express stopped by. He was unsure if he’d be able to take all of his bags in — but he was trying not to be upset about it.
“We’ve got four kids and we collect (cans) pretty quick,” said Trevena. “It definitely adds up and we tried to bring it in today but I don’t know if it’s going to happen. . . It will be disappointing if we can’t get it in, but I guess there’s not much you can do. It is what it is.”
Trevena was just hoping to get his collection of bags out of his basement, he said, especially as the family was moving in a few days. But the long wait had him thinking about taking his bottles and cans elsewhere.
“I’m not going to let it go to the dump. This seems like the good thing to do (but) I might look at other options for disposal,” said Trevena. “So whatever they won’t let us take in, we’ll probably just give away.”
A number of local charitable organizations has been accepting donations of recycling for this exact reason, including the Humane Society, Moose Jaw SCRAPS, and Infinity 4-H.
For Ashley Sorensen and Ryan Thompson, waiting just further down the line with their own collection, the feeling was much the same.
“(It’s a relief), big time, it was filling up my balcony. Nothing that you want the neighbours to see,” said Thompson.
An employee estimated that he had seen and processed over 100 patrons by mid-afternoon on Monday, with still several hours in the day left to go.
The long lineups, they said, were partially due to the reduced number of staff working in order to be in compliance with public health orders about social distancing, but also largely due to the huge influx of material hitting SARCAN’s counters.
The lineups continue to be long again on Tuesday, and it's likely that standing in line outside of SARCAN will be the new normal for at least a little while yet.
