N.W.T. beverage container recycling hits record low - Action News
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N.W.T. beverage container recycling hits record low

A combination of COVID-19 closures and delays and a "significant increase" in beverage containers sold throughout the territory were driving forces behind a record low recovery rate for one of the territory's recycling programs.

32.5 million containers distributed, 20.1 million recovered in 1st pandemic year

Bottles of wine are shown on a shelf in a store.
Wine bottles can be recycled through the territory's beverage container recycling program. During the first year of the pandemic, the program hit its lowest-ever recovery rate since it began in 2005. (CBC)

The N.W.T.'s beverage container recycling program hit a record low in the 2020-2021 fiscal year recovering only 62 per cent of the beverage containers that were distributed throughout the territory.

That marks a more than 20 per cent drop from the usual recovery rate, which is in the mid-80s, according to Michelle Hannah, the territory's acting director of waste reduction and management.

Although she doesn't have answers about what happened to those materials instead, Hannah does know why the drop happened: a combination of COVID-19 pandemic closures and delays, paired with an increase in the number of beverage containers people purchased.

Recycling depots were closed for a couple of months starting March 19, 2020.

"Spring [and] summertime is when people are most likely to be bringing in their containers so the fact our depots were closed for so long meant they weren't able to take in those containers at the time people would be most likely to bring them in," said Hannah.

The territory's beverage container recycling program reached its lowest recovery rate, 62 per cent, in the 2020-2021 fiscal year. Michelle Hannah, acting director of waste reduction and management, said it had climbed back up to 71 per cent in January 2022. (Department of Environment and Natural Resources)

According to the territory's annual report on waste reduction and management released this week, about 32.5 million containers were distributed between April 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021. It saysthat's a "dramatic increase" of 4 million more containers over the previous fiscal year. Of those, about 20.1 million were returned.

Throughout the course of June, nine depots that serve 80 per cent of the territory's population gradually began to reopen with new health and safety protocols in place, said the report.

"They weren't able to process as much in the same time, between not being able to have the same staff and customer capacity," said Hannah. "They worked really hard but they just couldn't catch up."

The recovery rate isincreasing, said Hannah, and as of January it was up to 71per cent. But she's not sure it'll bounce back to the mid-80s in the 2021-2022 fiscal year.

Difference between territory and city recycling

Unlike the City of Yellowknife's recycling program, which buries all its plastic and glass at its landfill site, Hannah said the territory has buyers for all the containers and electronics it collects.

This graphic, in the territory's annual report, outlines the type of materials that are sent to Alberta and what they become. Tetra paks go to Michigan and eventually become toilet paper and tissue paper, and aluminum goes to Kentucky where it's turned into new beverage containers and 'many other products.' (Department of Environment and Natural Resources)

According to the report, refillable and non-refillable glass bottles, plastic containers and bi-metals (like tomato juice and evaporated milk cans) and electronics all go to Alberta. Tetra packs and aluminum go to Michigan and Kentucky.

Hannah said Alberta businesses report to the province's recycling management authority and in some casesto her departmentas well about where items are going downstream. She said she's "confident" all the businesses they'reworking with are doing what they say they're doing with the materials.

Last year, the City of Yellowknife sent 64 tonnes of plastic and six tonnes of glass to the landfill. Like othermunicipalities throughout Canada, the citystruggled to find a market for used plastics after China which used to be a primary importer of the world's recyclables banned 24 types of recyclablesand solid waste at the start of 2018.

Plastic inside one of the bins at Yellowknife's sorting stations on Feb. 26. The city collected 64 tonnes of plastic from these bins in 2021, all of which was buried in the landfill. (Liny Lamberink/CBC)

Hannah said the territorial program has more material to sell, and it's part of a recycling affiliate network that helps it find buyers. But the fact it has recycling depots where people bring containers to get a refund for a fee that's baked into the purchase price of an item also makes a big difference, she said.

"We're already starting with a cleaner, separated product," she said.

Yellowknife also has a lot of "optimistic recyclers," she noted, who throw items that can't be recycled, like pellet bags and other types of film plastic, into the city's blue bin sorting stations in hopes that they'll be recycledsomehow. She said that can "spoil a whole batch" of recycling and makes it more difficult to find a business that wants it.