Before you load a bin or other container with materials you wish to dispose of at the Francis Cooke facility, become familiar with the current rate sheet and our lists of recoverable resources, illegal and unacceptable items.

To save money, keep recoverable resources separate and avoid allowing unacceptable or illegal items to be placed in your waste containers. It costs much less to tip garbage that does not contain easily recoverable resources. Tipping recoverable resources separately in our resource recovery drop-off areas costs much less than dropping loads to be buried as garbage. To avoid unnecessary expenses, bins and other containers should be inspected regularly for proper sorting and for items that should not be placed in them.

The best way to save money and save the Bow Valley’s only landfill space is to use separate containers for different materials and empty these containers at the proper drop-off sites. If it is not feasible to have additional containers on a work site, then cost savings can be realized by placing materials in the same container for transport, but loaded in such a way that easily recoverable resources can be removed separately at each drop off area. Some operators have found that accumulating different materials in heavy bags that can be stacked into a bin for transport and then the bags removed separately at our site is an effective way to avoid higher tipping fees for mixed waste. When operating conditions permit, small amounts of electronics, metal, construction wood and drywall can be hand-sorted from smaller loads and placed into large bins provided at the landfill tipping face.

Our site’s location adjacent to provincial park lands, and ever-changing wind conditions, make containing litter very important. Please help us keep our property and public roadways clean and safe by ensuring the loads you bring to the facility are properly secured.

BVWMC is required to enforce municipal regulations to control waste material escaping loads. Any loads assessed at the scale as not adequately tarped or secure on entry to the site may be charged additional fees. Tarps may be blanket or mesh but must not have rips or gaps that could allow material to escape. Items weighing over 10 kilograms (20 pounds) must be secured in the vehicle or trailer. Swing doors on waste bins must prevent material escaping from the edges of the doors. Loads of concrete, asphalt, aggregates or other excavated or bulk materials must adhere to provincial transportation legislation and regulations. Loads must remain covered and secure until reaching the assigned tipping area.

The Francis Cooke facility is a large and complex site and it can be challenging to manage activity. All visitors must report to the scale window when they arrive regardless of the reason for their visit. For security, traffic, site safety or emergency response, we need to know who is on the site and where they are. Our scale staff will also help make your visit safe and efficient while helping you minimize tipping fees.

We are required by law to understand the material you are placing into our care. Please be patient and courteous when staff ask you about what you are bringing to our facility. Our staff are trained and experienced in recognizing dangers that may not be obvious to others. Their questions also allow each load to be properly handled and entered into our records to ensure we can give you advice about how to avoid unnecessary fees. Rude or otherwise unacceptable behaviour is not tolerated and our security system records all incidents.

Our facility is a rugged outdoor environment that presents a variety of hazards. Users are asked to dress accordingly for the rough terrain and often windy weather conditions. Sturdy shoes or work boots are required. Open shoe, sandal, or flip-flop footwear is not allowed. Use work gloves and safety glasses which may be borrowed from our scale office

It is important to remember when you throw something out that you are not the last one to handle it. Improperly disposed chemicals pose a health hazard, not only to the environment, but to the people handling those items.

An empty propane camping cylinder or hazardous substance container may pose no threat to you after you improperly toss it in a bin intended for garbage. But if the residual gas or chemical in the container explodes among staff and users at our site it can be very dangerous. Even a seemingly harmless old fridge can be dangerous if it contains ammonia gas. An improperly disposed small battery can spark a landfill fire deep underground long after it has been buried. These fires can be very expensive to control and produce potentially toxic smoke and groundwater contamination that can be devastating to the ecosystem and local community.

Please review our list of basic rules in advance. Behave in a courteous manner, follow the instructions of our staff and obey all traffic control lights and signs while visiting our site. We may refuse access to the facility if these rules are not being followed.

Landfill rules can be downloaded here.

All material dropped on our site becomes the property of BVWMC. Due to safety concerns and potential value for recycling, we do not allow materials to be collected on our site. However, we do recognize that things are left in our care that may be seen as useful by our customers. If you see some things you would like to have, please speak to our scale staff to see if arrangements may be made for the articles to be recovered.

Contact us well in advance of delivery if you are planning a project that involves removal of topsoil or excavated material for disposal at the Francis Cooke facility. These materials are accepted if we can be assured they have not been affected by hydrocarbons, heavy metals or other contaminants. We require customers to follow our acceptance process that includes submission of an application for acceptance of excavated materials. Details of the acceptance process are provided in our Facility Guide and Users Handbook. An application form and a description of how we classify and charge fees for excavated material is provided further down on this website page.

All users must report back to the scale window before leaving the site. This allows empty vehicles to be weighed to determine the weight of material left on our site, assess the appropriate charges and issue a scale ticket for the load. It is also important for anyone who enters our site to let us know that they have safely left the site.

We encourage anyone generating waste that is delivered to our site to be sure they receive and review the scale tickets for their waste disposal. The scale ticket serves a receipt for payment. This information can also be used by project managers and accounting teams to track how their waste is being managed and charged. But it is also useful if there are concerns with a load and we wish to offer feedback to a customer or assist them in their waste management practices. Scale tickets may also be useful to document that materials have been disposed according to project permits.

Project managers have the option of asking our scale office to register a specific project in our scale computer for tracking. This allows us to provide summary reports of project-specific information such as costs and diversion rates for all loads tipped at our facility after the project has been completed.