Calgarians will start saving roughly $7 per month on their blue cart program charge as the city implements Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) rules.
Councillors approved changes to Calgary’s waste bylaw that will see the monthly blue cart charge dropped from $9.34 and $9.52 in 2025 and 2025, respectively, to $2.17 each month. The changes will start April 1, 2025, to coincide with the Alberta Extended Producer Responsibility system.
To start, it will only apply to single-family homes in Calgary.
That program transfers the responsibility for managing certain recyclables and hazardous materials from local governments (and taxpayers) to the producers, like manufacturers and retailers.
“A small monthly charge continues to be required because there are some parts of Calgary’s current service that producers are not obligated to fund,” read the City of Calgary report cover page.
EPR is intended to encourage producers to design and produce less packaging waste and choose materials that are less toxic and easier to recycle.
Ward 14 Coun. Peter Demong has been working on the EPR file for the better part of eight years.
“This has been a long time coming,” Demong told reporters on Tuesday.
“This is a program that has been in place in a number of provinces for literally decades, so it only made sense to push as hard as we could to have it come here to Calgary.”
Demong credited the work of AB Munis, who has been advocating for legislative changes for the past 15 years.
The City of Calgary said the fee reduction shouldn’t impact service levels.
“Calgarians will continue to receive the same high service levels they currently have and experience a seamless service transition when Extended Producer Responsibility is implemented,” they said.
Multi-family blue cart EPR is coming, Demong said
The system will be in place for three different types of products: packaging and paper products, hazardous materials and special products, and single-use and rechargeable household batteries.
The EPR program is planned for implementation in multi-family properties by October 2026.
“Multi-residential that’s later, that’s got another 18 months. There will be another process going forward to try to bring multi-residential into the same program,” Demong said.
Calgarians could see a very marginal increase on products as producers make changes to their packaging, Demong said.
“It’s also something that we know through several studies, that Albertans were already paying for on some of the national brands, because they’re national brands, and they have other EPR and other provinces, so it only made sense for them to increase the costs to on those,” Demong said.
“By costs, we’re talking like a half a penny on a box or a tenth of a penny on a plastic bottle, something along those lines. It allows the producers the pain of what it costs and thereby encourages them to start changing their product mix that would make things more easily recyclable and less weight involved.”
The City of Calgary expects to monitor the implementation over the next year with a report on potential changes to the rate structure expected in Q2 2026.
