​Originally published Oct 9/19 The Reminder. Flin Flon, Mb. Sponsored by North of 53 Consumers Coop.

Recycling has frequently been in the news lately.

In 2018, China stopped accepting contaminated plastic. That caused considerable problems in the recycling system.

Recycling brokers were shipping large amounts of low quality or poorly sorted plastic to China as there were very few if any mills in North America that would take it.

Many communities had added plastic bags, wrap and other low quality plastics to the list of recyclables because China was taking it. The changes in China left them scrambling to find other markets.

The CBC program Marketplace went undercover in Malaysia. This country has restricted plastic imports to 62 licensed companies. But the plastic continues to ‘pour in.’ Marketplace found many illegal plastic recycling companies with poor working conditions and terrible environmental consequences.

The other Marketplace story put a tracking device in three bales of plastic bags sold to three different companies for recycling in British Columbia. Only one bale was recycled. One was incinerated for energy leaving behind a very toxic ash and the other went to the landfill.

How does this relate to recycling in Flin Flon?

First of all, most if not all the plastics being recycled in these situations were plastic bags and other low grade plastics. The companies we send our materials to have never taken these plastics because they cannot find companies to recycle them.

These companies have indicated they send all their plastics to mills in North America.
Plastic recycling is facing challenges. The prices for sorted plastics have dropped drastically in the last few months.
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More mills in are needed in North America and there needs to be a willingness to pay the cost of doing recycling the right way. 

Originally published Oct 2/19 The Reminder. Flin Flon, Mb. Sponsored by North of 53 Consumers Coop.

I remember a conversation with a very committed recycler who was somewhat upset because he discovered when he picked up his bag to bring to the Centre that it was his garbage. He had put his bag of recyclables out for garbage pickup.

Both the recyclables and garbage were in black garbage bags so it is easy to understand how this mistake happened.

We picked up recyclables from a local business. When we went through the bags which were all black we discovered we also had bathroom garbage.

It is easy to avoid this problem.

Garbage goes in solid coloured bags which are usually black or dark green.  

Recycling goes in bags you can see through, and may be blue, green, clear, orange or anther colour.

It makes it easy to see if it is recyclables or garbage.

Surveys show blue is the colour most people think of for recycling.  It was the colour chosen at the beginning of curbside collection for the bins household put their recyclables in.  

The bins on Main Street have a blue side for recyclables and a black side for garbage.  The park recycling bins are blue.

This colour is the cause of some confusion in our community.  

Blue barrels are used for garbage in some of the parks and at community events.  
The garbage dumpsters at the Recycling Centre are blue. We labelled them as ‘garbage only’ after finding bags of recycling in them. We realized the blue colour was confusing.

But blue recycling bins and clear bags for recyclables are here to stay.
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We strongly encourage the use of recycling bags so it is clear what is recyclable and what is garbage. 
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Originally published Sept 25/19 The Reminder. Flin Flon, Mb. Sponsored by North of 53 Consumers Coop.

​Culture Days are here again.

What is culture? Usually we think of creating and experiencing the arts but the word is also used to describe workplaces and countries.

I googled ‘culture’ and found this: “The customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group.”

The word ‘customs’ is of particular interest. This is the way people do things in their everyday lives including what they do with their waste.

The culture of waste management has change greatly in the last 50 years. We used to use things up and throw them away. No one gave much thought to where ‘away’ was.
Everything went to the dump, a word that describes what happened. Waste was all dumped together in a pile and buried.

In the 1970’s awareness of the negative impact our waste can have on the environment grew. The reality was that these dumps or landfills were taking up huge amounts of space and the leachate was contaminating nearby lakes and streams.

Recycling became an important way to deal with the problem. Metals have been recycled for a long time as it is relatively easy. Cardboard, paper, glass and plastics recycling became important in reducing the amount of garbage and for preserving natural resources.  

Some mills were built in North America to recycle the different materials. As recycling rates increased China and other countries began recycling large amounts of North American recyclables.  

In 2017 China stopped taking recyclables unless they were contaminant free, a standard that was hard to meet.

Recycling has become the custom in our culture that the China ban has us working to increase recycling capacity, not end the practice. 

September total – 43,332 kg
       
        Aluminum – 729 kg
        Commingled* - 11,912 kg
        Office Paper – 2,867 kg
        Cardboard – 22,691 kg
        Glass – 4,212 kg
        Books – 659 kg
        Other plastics – 66 kg

Total for 2019 –  395,711 kg
Total for 2018 – 391,839 kg
Difference – 3,872 kg


E – waste – 9,280 kg
 
Batteries – 116 kg

* Co-mingled is unsorted materials sent to Winnipeg for sorting