Each day, 250 metric tonnes of recycling are sent to Emterra Environmental for recycling in Winnipeg.
Blue carts from Winnipeggers are supposed to be filled with all sorts of paper, cardboard and plastic. What happens to all that material once it hits their plant?
It appears some of it is simply dumped out on the ground behind their facility.
There are loading docks where the debris is piled three quarters of the way to the top.
"These materials are behind our building. And we have a housekeeping program to prevent them from blowing,” said Paulina Leung from Emterra Environmental.
Although people are only supposed to put things like paper, cardboard and tin cans in their recycling carts, Emterra said garbage like food waste and even animal parts are being sent to the facility.
And in pictures obtained by CTV News, large numbers of rats have moved in to feast on the items.
"One of the negative side effects of having food residue come in with the recycling, or even people just throwing in food waste, into their blue cart, is that it does attract rodents,” said Leung.
Coun. Ross Eadie (Mynarski) calls the situation a health and safety issue.
And although the debris and rats are on private property, Eadie doesn't believe it should be tolerated by the city.
"If we have problems with a scrap yard in our ward, we have to send bylaw people down to make sure they follow the rules,” said Eadie.
The city says it has spoken with Emterra and the company is working on a plan to clean up this material.
Once it's gone, the city said it doesn't expect this type of accumulation in the future.
Emterra said it has spent millions of dollars to convert the site into a productive recyclables-processing facility.
It said it has has a rodent-management program in place and it believes it's handling the situation well.
