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What happens after you drop off your recycling at the depot? FAQ.
After you put your yoghurt container in the plastic tote at the Depot - assisted by our lovely and knowledgeable staff and volunteers - where does your recycling go? Most of the collected materials are baled by the staff and our Depot Manager, Grant, hauls it to a sorting plant in Victoria. From there it is shipped to processing plants to prepare it for its next incarnation. Provincial guide lines encourage Recycle BC to process as much as possible as close to the source as possible. 75% of what you put in the totes is processed in the Pacific Northwest (a vast improvement since the program started in 2014 when just 33% was processed locally). The majority of what is left is processed in North America with a small portion shipped off shore (mostly tetra packs and styrofoam). 98% of what you put in totes is recycled. That’s not bad. But how much of what is produced gets recycled (recovery rate)? That depends on the material. Virtually all of the glass is collected. 95% of paper products are collected, 73% of metal, 60% of rigid plastic and 23% of flexible plastic. In their 4 year plan, Recycle BC sets a goal for recovery. The government then proposes improvements for the next year (ie. they are expected to collect 73% of rigid plastic by 2025 - up from 60% in 2022. What does the container you brought back to the depot get made into? We are lucky in BC to have one of the world leaders in plastic recycling - Merlin Plastics - in New Westminster. They sort, pelletize and mix pellets into the proportions a particular client wants. Recycled plastics are in new containers, plant pots, yoga mats, clothing, toys and building materials. Similarly, glass is recycled into other glass containers, fibreglass, construction materials and sand blasting materials. Metals are turned into sheet metal and then any product that would be made from new metal. Your recycled paper is turned into paper towels, toilet paper, newspapers, egg cartons, grocery bags and greeting cards. Government regulations about including recycled materials in everyday products could be a huge boon to recovering the costs for recycling. Who pays for recycling in BC? Recycling is not cheap. The program we are a part of pays $66 per household per year for recycling the 40.5kg produced per household. In BC we have what is called “Extended Producer Responsibility”. This means that the companies that sell the materials are responsible for the cost of recycling. They are charged per kg for each material they sell. For example, styrofoam costs the seller $2.82/kg. Paper for magazines costs $0.25/kg. These producer fees are adjusted yearly to account for changes in the costs of the recycling. The total cost of the recycling program in BC is $135 million. (Because we are a small community and lack the efficiencies of scale, the MI Recycling Depot also receives funding from the CRD outside the Recycle BC program.) - Kim Harris |