Accessibility The OPEIC Program provides British Columbians with reasonable access to recycling services for EOPE. The Program Plan sets out the following commitments with regard to accessibility: • Maintain a minimum 99.5% accessibility rate for Regular products in accordance with the SABC Accessibility Standard. • Maintain a minimum of 81 collection sites that accept Bulky products. • For both Regular and Bulky products, provide service to gap 5F 4 areas that do not have a permanent collection site in a timely manner and a manner appropriate to the context determined by OPEIC. Specifically, OPEIC will commit to holding a minimum of one advertised collection event a year in gap areas for each of Regular and Bulky products, as applicable. 6F 5 • Report annually on government requests for access to collection services for Bulky products and continue to work with regional districts to address any gaps identified with regard to consumer access to bulky product collections. Advertise these options in affected communities using appropriate channels, as requested. The Program measures consumer access to permanent collection sites in accordance with the accessibility standard established by the SABC. SABC defines reasonable access as a 30- minute drive or less to a collection site in urban areas with a population of 4,000 or more and a 45-minute drive or less in rural areas with a population of 4,000 or more. The accessibility standard is viewed as the minimum standard, and the Program works to exceed this standard. Accessibility levels were calculated in 2022 by an independent third party using Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis. The 2022 analysis utilized population data, provincial road networks and dissemination block files obtained from the 2021 Census of Population by Statistic Canada. Several changes occurred within the data set between the last accessibility analysis in 2019 because of the revised census 6 . Changes included an overall growth of BC’s population, changes in individual communities populations, modification to BC’s Road networks and an increase in the number of census dissemination blocks, all of which impacted the latest accessibility analysis. The accessibility study conducted in 2022 found that the percentage of British Columbians in communities with populations greater than 4,000 that had access to a permanent collection site within the required driving time was 98%. The previous accessibility conducted in 2019 calculated an accessibility rate of 99.5%. As there was a net increase in contracted collection sites between the 2019 and 2022 accessibility studies, it is likely that the drop-in accessibility rates can, in part, be attributed to the aforementioned changes in the dataset leading to new “gap areas”.
4 A population center that meets the SABC Accessibility Standard and does not have a permanent collection site for Program Products is considered a “gap area”. 5 Per Ministry of Environment & Climate Change Strategy, Approval letter to OPEIC Extended Producer Responsibility Program Plan (July 30, 2020). 6 The previous accessibility study was conducted in 2019 and used the 2016 Statistics Canada Census Data and road networks.
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