April 19, 2007
Alberta recycling needs a boost
If there's a heightened concern about the environment these days, it sure isn't visible enough at Alberta recycling depots.
The rate of return for all containers, from juice boxes to beer cans, dropped to 76.5 per cent in 2006, down from more than 80 per cent five years ago. And if beer containers are taken out of the mix, the recycling rate is only 68 per cent, says Bob Saari, managing director of the province's Beverage Container Management Board.
At the same time, sales of drinks have soared in Alberta, with the biggest growth in plastic bottles. An astonishing 484 million plastic bottles were sold last year compared to 243 million six years ago.
The trouble is, plastic bottles have the lowest recycling rate at 67.7 per cent, and the biggest problem in this category is the ubiquitous water bottle, says Saari. A lot of reusable plastic is suddenly ending up in municipal landfill sites.
Interestingly, people are diligent about returning their glass beer bottles, which have a 95-per-cent return rate. The figure for beer cans is almost as good, at 89 per cent. But plastic bottles are seen as throwaway items.
Environment Minister Rob Renner speculated last week that the deposit on each container may now be too low to encourage recycling. A higher deposit might help on water bottles, but one suspects there's also a need for consumer education that plastic should be recycled.
Saari also says more bottle depots are needed in more convenient places. Good locations are difficult to find because city zoning confines depots to industrial areas. Saari would like to see more depots in high-traffic commercial areas. Another possibility, he suggests, could be putting a small bottle depot near the city-run newspaper and cardboard recycling bins found in numerous locations.
While there's no breakdown of the recycling rate for each city, Edmonton's curbside recycling is a great backstop. Cans and bottles that end up in blue bags are sent over to the bottle depots, earning the dump as much as $140,000 a year.
(Calgary is expected to start curbside recycling in 2009. Lots of smaller cities, however, still aren't planning to offer this service.)
Renner is right to review the bottle recycling system to get it back to the high rates of its early years.
But there's even more work to be done at the dairy board on milk cartons and plastic milk jugs. Only 28 per cent of the cardboard cartons are recycled and only about 52 per cent of the jugs, according to the board's 2006 annual report.
The voluntary recycling system for milk containers was left to the Alberta Dairy Council, which collects a small fee on each jug of milk. But the fact is, deposit systems deliver a much higher rate of recycling than voluntary programs.
Renner should set some better targets for milk containers and if the dairy council can't improve its performance, there are other systems to consider.
And while we're looking at recycling, what about those small, household batteries, full of toxic heavy metals, that end up in landfill sites?
In Edmonton, the Eco-Stations take in barrels-full of batteries each year, but thousands are still end up at the dump. The good news is that by 2009,
Edmonton's state-of -the-art garbage sorting plant will catch even the small batteries left in garbage bags and they'll be sent to the hazardous waste dump at Ryley.
Unfortunately, no other Alberta city has such a sophisticated process for garbage. So Saari suggests the government should find a way to get collect batteries at bottle depots.
That makes good sense; Renner should look at that as part of his current review.
The current economic boom should be an opportunity to take some steps forward on these issues, and not an excuse for environmental indifference.
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/opinion/story.html?id=e00a36bb-cdb9-4243-b93f-d9d4174d256b
