Winnipeg predicts a drop of almost $1 million on the sale of its recyclables this year, despite an expected increase in the amount of recycling it will receive.

The city's 2007 operating budget predicts a drop of almost $1 million — or about 20 per cent — in the coming year, but the change isn't due to a drop in recycling.

Although the volume of recycling is up, city officials say, the amount they receive for selling it is down.

Newspapers and flyers make up about half of the material in the blue boxes of city residents, and the city tries to turn all that paper into revenue.

The city's recycling plant uses the paper to generate newsprint, which it sells to paper mills. The revenue is then put back into the city's recycling program.

But when the market for newsprint stumbles, the city feels the pain — and that's what's happening now, explained Dan McInnis, the city's manager of solid waste.

"We're seeing a lot of paper mills close," McInnis told the CBC. "The one that had the most impact on us was the Kenora Abitibi paper mill."

When the mill closed in 2006, the city lost its only buyer of high-quality newsprint, McInnis said.

To deal with the closure, the city's recycling plant had downgraded its production to a lower-quality product called ONP6.

The city is selling that wherever it can, McInnis said, but it has to go further to find clients, and lower-grade paper means lower revenue.

"Right now we're making that ONP product, that lower quality newsprint, and that's the best business decision for us at the current time," he said.

McInnis said the city will resume producing the higher quality product if and when it finds buyers.  But in the meantime, recycling revenues will suffer.

Trash volumes up

Meanwhile, the amount of trash headed to the city's Brady Road landfill is on the rise.

This year's operating budget predicts the dump will receive about three per cent more garbage, compared with 2006.

McInnis said the volume of both dumped and recycled refuse is on the rise.

"I think the total waste stream continues to grow," he told the CBC. "There's a number of factors that would influence that … things like more people, more economic activity. Weather has a big impact, if you get a wet year or a dry year, the amount of grass that's growing. All that sort of stuff."

Most of the expected 2007 increase likely comes from the businesses that use the landfill, not from private homes, McInnis said.

It's expected the higher volume of trash will earn the city an additional $330,000 in tipping fees in the coming year.

In 2006, Winnipeggers put 42,620 tonnes of material in their blue boxes, while 232,064 tonnes of trash were sent to landfill.