BFI Canada opened its new Waste Handling and Material Recovery Facility on the southeast edge of the city on Thursday.

Minister of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development, Diana McQueen, was on hand to start the conveyer belt at the new plant on Bluegrass Drive.

“This is an excellent facility, an excellent addition to Alberta. The third facility of its kind here,” said McQueen.

The minister was joined by Rocky View County Reeve, Rolly Ashdown and the President of the Recycling Council of Alberta Sharon Howland.

“It’s an excellent thing for the County of Rocky View cause it diversifies our tax base. It helps the whole region in general and it adds to the environmental part of what we’re trying to do in the county by being responsible for our entire environment,” said Reeve Rolly Ashdown.

“This is a growth business for us. The recycling movement is huge and we’re very much a part of it,” said Joe Rajotte, Vice President of BFI for Western Canada.

The new technologically advanced, 122,000 square foot facility, will serve Calgary and southern Alberta.

“Having a resource here for southern Alberta is important. We want to draw material not just from the City of Calgary but from all of southern Alberta,” said Rajotte.

“The Alberta strategy ‘Too Good to Waste’ really looks at how, currently, we have 80 percent of our waste going into landfills and 20 percent being recycled, and this facility here at BFI is an excellent example, another addition to our province to make sure that we’re starting to work towards to flip those numbers to move to 20 percent landfill and 80 percent recycling,” said McQueen.

The two other facilities are in Lethbridge and Edmonton and BFI says they will continue to look for opportunities in other parts of the province.

“We will certainly look in communities that require recycling services and if we can do that we absolutely will,” said Rajotte.

Albertans are used to taxpayer funded recycling initiatives and the minister says the private facility is good for the county and for southern Alberta.

“Alberta’s always open for business and this is an opportunity for business to move into. We all take individual ownership with regards to recycling and making sure that we recycle in our homes and then having facilities like this and businesses like this to then take that waste stream and make sure that we’re reusing it, is very important for this province,” said McQueen.

“For the whole region it’s a great thing that this is located where it is because it’s centrally located and we’re just proud it’s in Rocky View County,” said Ashdown.

Ashdown says he thinks the facility will help increase recycling in the area overall.

BFI officials say the new facility should be able to handle 100,000 tons per year and employs just over 100 people.