Paper coffee cups and the plastic lids can now be included in your weekly curbside recycling. Aquatera made the announcement during the city’s Earth Day celebrations at the Montrose Cultural Centre. CEO Bernd Manz expects the move will have a huge benefit on their landfill.

“We encourage environmental stewardship and the more that we can divert from the landfill, the longer life it will have.  And again this is a great way to expand that program with things that people use everyday and before have been throwing out, but now can recycle.”

The cups and lids must be rinsed and clean of any coffee remnants before they can be recycled.

Tomorrow is budget review day for the County of Grande Prairie. Now that assessment and education mill rate figures have been finalized by the province, the County has a better idea of how much money in tax revenue they will be taking in this year. That will allow them to finalize their 2014 budget, which could include adding some funding projects. A number of groups will make last minute funding requests tomorrow, including the Philip J Currie dinosaur museum, the Grande Prairie Hospice and Pallative Care society, and the Beaverlodge-West County Pool. A request to construct a building on the Community Services yard will also be considered by council.

Construction of a 46 unit apartment building along 84th avenue could go ahead in the coming weeks, pending approval of a development permit by city council. The permit includes variances for fencing and screening, fire lane width, and the number of trees and shrubs to be included on the property. Dan Wong with Bearisto, Lehners and Ketchum says the developer has faced a number of challenges in trying to get this project off the ground.

“There is utility right-of-ways running all over the place there, which limits his ability to build fences, put up trees and what not for screening.  So he wanted to put into his application a request for variances.”

One of the variances is the installation of 25 trees and 52 shrubs on the site. Wong says that is half of what is currently required in the new land use by-law, but is double what was required in the old document.

The unveiling of a coffee cup recycling centre is the highlight of Earth Day activities in Grande Prairie tomorrow. Michelle Gairdner of the city’s environmental stewardship department says the special recycling containers will be located at all Esquires Coffee locations in Grande Prairie. She adds the idea came from Michelle Burke of Esquires.

“We were talking about earth day and she said ‘hey, I have this cool thing.’ So we said ‘ this is really neat.’ and Aquatera was also interested as well. So we just thought it would be a different way to kick off earth day.”

The unveiling will take place at 9:15 am at the Esquires in the Montrose Cultural Centre. Gairdner says the goal is to keep as many coffee cups out of the landfill as they can.

Big name monster trucks like “Big-Foot”, “Git-R-Done” and “Western Renegade” will invade the Crystal Centre this weekend. Monster Truck Throwdown will put on a total of four show this weekend – Friday and Saturday nights, as well as Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Barry Parkin is the driver of Western Renegade, and says there is more to the show than just the high flying antics of the monster trucks.

“They will get to see some freestyle BMX racing, and of course you are also going to have a chance to get up close and meet the drivers.  We have pit parties before each show where you can get close to the trucks, ask some questions and get a picture taken with us.”

Parkin encourages everyone to check out the action, adding every show is going to be a little different from the previous one.