British Columbia residents recently gained access to the Return-It Express program, through which they can bag their containers and drop them off at one of 60 depots. | Courtesy of Encorp Pacific
The majority of beverage containers in British Columbia had their deposit values increase from 5 cents to 10 cents at the start of this month, creating more consistency in the provincial redemption program.
London, Ontario has a goal of 60% waste diversion by the end of 2022. | Wei Seah/Shutterstock
London, Ontario approved a grant for a Hefty EnergyBag program, making it the first Canadian city to embrace the program for collecting hard-to-recycle plastics.
A perfect storm of industry pressures, including declines in commodity prices and rises in freight costs, led a Canadian waste and recycling firm to shutter this week.
Experts say a deposit system for non-alcoholic beverage containers would complement a Canadian province’s curbside recycling system, by cutting costs and increasing the volume of material recycled each year.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government will ban a number of single-use plastic products and will support establishing extended producer responsibility for plastic items.
Federal legislation proposed in Canada requires consumer packaging to be made from a short list of recyclable materials. The guidelines allow only the most common recyclables, including just two plastic resins.
A recycling expert has offered up criticisms of British Columbia’s extended producer responsibility system for printed paper and packaging.
Still from a Waste Robotics demonstration video.
This story has been updated.
The Canadian government will invest in a company that’s developing artificial intelligence machinery to separate materials at recycling facilities.
Merlin Plastics and Peninsula Plastics Recycling are making substantial investments in mixed-plastics processing capacity, bringing positive news for a region hard hit by China’s ban.