Originally published October 6, 2021   The Reminder, Flin Flon, Mb. 

I’ve been concerned about how much commingled materials we recycle every month for a couple of years. The total weight compared to the previous year was falling each month. This tonnage is a major factor in the calculation of the subsidy we receive from industry each year.

Commingled materials are the recyclables that are baled together to be sorted in Winnipeg. We stopped most sorting in 2013 as we struggled financially, did not have the space, couldn’t keep up and needed more staff who were receiving minimum wage. This decision reduced or eliminate all of those problems.

Aluminum beverage containers, corrugated cardboard, office paper and glass are still separated. Glass is reused locally and the other materials are sold. Newspaper has not been separated out since June 2017.

The decrease in tonnage compared to previous years began in July 2018. Until then monthly totals were 11 to 15 metric tons or tonnes.

In 2019 eleven tonnes was the usual weight each month.  Some months were in the single digits. By December, it was 12 tonnes behind 2018.  

Only one month reached 11 tonnes in 2020. Four months were less than 10 tonnes. By December, it was nine tonnes behind 2019 and 30 tonnes behind the total for 2017.

Things began to change in November of 2020. The weights compared to the previous year are increasing. It is now four tonnes ahead of last year. Monthly weights are still less than 12 tonnes.

Why is this happening? The biggest factor in the lower numbers is significantly fewer newspapers and magazines in the mix. They weigh the most.
​
The increases in the last year indicate that more people are recycling which is good news.  

Originally published September 22, 2021  The Reminder, Flin Flon, Mb. 

​Manitoba is reviewing provincial recycling and waste diversion programs. A survey of Manitobans between January 21 and February 10, 2021. 1052 people completed the survey.

The results showed that people were not confident about three things.  

First, they were unsure what can be recycled. Second was not knowing how to prepare or clean items. Third was a lack of confidence that items collected are actually being recycled.

Here is a look at each of these concerns.

1. Information about what is recyclable is made available in a variety of ways: on the website, www.flinflonrecycling.org, on the Flin Flon Recycling Facebook group, and in a flier mailed to all homes in our communities and available from the Recycling Centre, a roadside sign, radio announcements and this newspaper column. Centre staff are always willing to answer questions by telephone at (204) 687-6169 or by emailing recycled@mymts.net .

   
    2.    Recyclables should not be drippy, sticky or gooey. Drink containers should be                well drained. Food should be removed from containers. A quick rinse may be                enough. Others need to be washed.   
    
    3.     The Recycling Centre has checked the companies that receive our materials in               Winnipeg and is confident that all the items collected locally are recycled.                       These   companies sort and sell them to mills in Minnesota and Eastern                         Canada and the US. They pay the Recycling Centre more for cardboard,                         aluminum and office paper than the tipping fees they would be charged at                    landfills.     

            There are two exceptions. Glass is crushed and used to replace cover material              at the landfill. Non-recyclable items, items that are too dirty and paper items                that get wet because the containers in the bag were not empty also go to the                 landfill.  

Originally published September 8, 2021   The Reminder, Flin Flon, Mb. 

​The three R’s of waste reduction – reduce, reuse, recycle - is a hierarchy. The actions are in the order of most to least important.

While recycling has great value in reducing waste in landfills it is third in line. It also seems to be the easiest as most communities have active recycling programs.

The Flin Flon & District Environment Council, Inc which operates the Recycling Centre is a non-profit organization whose main goal is to promote environmental protection so being environmentally responsible guides our activities.

Reusing is a large part of our program.

Large plastic bags for the loose materials carts and for managing sorted materials are reused many times.

Large boxes used for produce at grocery stores are reused to ship books and large plastics. 

Reusable school supplies are given away.

Many of the non-recyclable items we receive are taken to the second-hand stores or advertised on social media. We strongly recommend that people take these items to the stores or advertise them instead of bringing them to us as we do not have a lot of space or time.

People have a lot of ideas about ways to reuse items that we recycle. Some examples are pop bottles, egg cartons, small plastic ice cream containers (for soup from the Food Bank), tin cans, fliers for fire starter or packing and jars.

We receive requests for cardboard boxes for moving or shipping items. We need at least a few hours’ notice to collect them as most boxes are baled up right away. We usually have a supply of bubble wrap and packing paper to go with them.
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For more information call the Recycling Centre at (204) 687-6169.

​Originally published August 25, 2021  The Reminder, Flin Flon, Mb. 

If you read this column regularly, you may have noticed it was missing last week.  We recently lost the column’s sponsor. The Reminder is looking for a new one. We will make sure the column continues to get information to you about the community recycling program.

We have made one change. We will be publishing every other week. This is partly due to workload. We also hope it will make it easier to find another sponsor.

We have been busy shipping.

Four tub skids of paint, two barrels of aerosol cans, one barrel each of fire extinguishers, green propane cylinders and light ballasts along with pails of materials from cleaning up paint spills were shipped from the Household Hazardous Waste depot at the landfill on Thursday.

Please note that all hazardous items must be in their original containers so people handling it at the disposal site know what they are dealing with and can handle it safely.

Tuesday this week is shipping day at the Recycling Centre. We are space challenged, especially just before shipping. Check the Flin Flon Recycling page on Facebook for pictures.

Last year we shipped 26 semi loads of compressed materials. That is the amount of space saved in local landfills.

We receive diapers occasionally. Often it is a small black bag that goes straight to the dumpster.

We missed two recently. We had to take a bale apart and remove contaminated items for the first one. The smell after a baler press alerted us to the second one. Fortunately, it was contained inside a box on the top of materials inside the baler and easily removed.
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It is always interesting what things people wish were recyclable!

Originally published August 11, 2021   The Reminder, Flin Flon, Mb. 

The blue box has become a symbol of recycling collection. I recently read about its history in the Canadian Encyclopedia.

Jack McGinnis is known as the father of the blue box. He was one of seven founding members of the ‘Is Five Foundation’ (IFF) in Toronto which tried a variety of different things. Its biggest contribution was in recycling.

Interest in recycling began in the early 1970’s in Canada. The Toronto based environmental organization Pollution Probe, coined the Three R’s hierarchy – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Toronto began experimenting with newspaper pickups from homes in 1971 but residents wanted to recycle other items as well. There were some depots run by non-profit organizations that were dependent on sale prices of materials and volunteers. These were often short lived.

In 1975, IFF began a program picking up recyclables in Jack McGinnis’s pickup truck in one Toronto neighbourhood. Four thousand homes were participating by 1977. In 1978 another neighbourhood was added with a 45% participation rate. The need for specialized equipment became obvious.

In 1977 IFF’s consulting arm, RIS with Environment Canada, created a recycling program for Canadian Forces Base Borden. It was very successful. Nyle Ludolph from Superior Sanitation (later Laidlaw) learned about the success of the program. He was skeptical but tried recycling in his home. When he had 95% less garbage, he saw a business opportunity and partnered with RIS.  

They began a six-month project in 1,000 homes in Kitchener Ontario in 1981. The highest recycling rates were in homes that were given a blue box with the words ‘We Recycle’ on it. 

The blue box program went city wide in 1983.
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The blue box article is on our Facebook page. 

Originally published July 21, 2021   The Reminder,  Flin Flon, Mb. 

Recycling is promoted in a variety of ways in our community.

In 2018 we began using radio messages.  Our local radio station CFAR is very supportive of non-profits like us.

At first, they made my ideas into a message and recorded it. More recently, I have been writing and recording them.

Here are a couple of my favourites.

This great message was written and recorded by CFAR staff.

“Humans consume one million plastic bottles every minute. Ninety-one per cent of these bottles will never be recycled. 
The next time you think, “I could never make a difference,” remember ... You are one
 in a million. 
Every water bottle recycled saves energy, oil, water, electricity and space in landfills.
 You cannot do all the good the world needs but the world needs all the good you can do.
 Good planets are hard to find. Help protect ours ... Recycle. “
 
This one combines several of the one-liners used to promote recycling.
​
“Do you recycle? If not, why not.
Does it seem too hard? Or maybe you don’t think it is important.
Recycling makes a big difference in how much space and money is needed for landfills. It makes garbage useful again. It is a way you can care for the environment.
Try it. You will be surprised how easy it is. Everything on the list goes in one bag. No sorting required. Have it picked up at your home or drop it off at the Recycling Centre at 9 Timber Lane or the trailer by Canadian Tire.
Find information at www.flinflonrecycling.org  or call the Recycling Centre at 204 687 6169.
Join the crowd. Recycle and be amazed. You can make a difference. “ 

Originally published July 14, 2021  The Reminder,  Flin Flon, Mb. 

The Recycling Centre has been very busy. The monthly tonnage numbers that are over 29 tonnes ahead of this time last year tell the story.

Half of this increase is shredded paper mostly from HudBay. Two thirds of the other half is cardboard. The rest of the increase is print and packaging materials sent to Winnipeg for sorting.

The increase in these materials is good news as they had been going down since mid-2018. This tells us more people are recycling.

The second baler was installed at the Recycling Centre in January 2018. Without this baler we would not be able to keep up.

But we are having trouble keeping up. We are victims of our own success. We have increased the hours worked on weekends. It becomes really challenging if one person is away unexpectedly or a truck needs repairs.

Anyone who drops off recyclables in the trailer by Canadian Tire is probably not surprised we are having a hard time keeping up as it is regularly full.  We try to remove a truckload every day.

The trailer has a couple of challenges. First: we need to have space in the Centre for the recyclables from the trailer.

The second is the time it takes to pull the trailer to the Centre and empty it completely including loose materials and garbage.  This takes three people an hour to complete. By comparison, the trailer of just bags and organized cardboard from Denare Beach takes 3 people 20 minutes to unload.
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It would be very helpful if more people used the Red Bag Curbside pickup service on Wednesday morning in Flin Flon. More information is available at www.flinflonrecycling.org or by calling (204) 687-6169.

Originally published July 7, 2021   The Reminder. Flin Flon, Mb. 

The Recycling Centre is operated by the Flin Flon & District Environment Council, Inc., a non-profit organization. All the money that comes in is used to cover costs.

The pandemic affected the markets for recycled materials in 2020. At the beginning of the year cardboard was worth nothing. Office paper had a bit of value.

Prices increased when the pandemic hit. The price for office paper, which is made into disposable paper products like paper towels, increased significantly then dropped by more than half by the end of the year. Cardboard had value again as business closures meant there was less available.

Ten percent of revenue in 2020 came from selling recyclables and beer empty returns; an increase of 4.5%. Forty percent of this was beer returns which increased by 18% over 2019.  

Recycling support grants from Flin Flon, Creighton, Denare Beach and individual lake residents provided 21% of the revenue in 2020.

Support from the stewardship organizations that subsidize print and packaging materials (PPM), electronics and hazardous waste provided 36% of revenue. Lower sale prices in 2019 resulted in an increase in the subsidy for PPM.

The Recycling Centre charges fees to cover the cost of pickup services.  In 2020, 13% of revenue came from these fees including the sale of red bags.

The Recycling Centre owns the building. Rent from the tenant provided 13% of the revenue.

The surplus from the Environment Council’s contract to operate the Flin Flon Landfill provided 5% of revenues.

Miscellaneous revenue including the student grant, donations and memberships provided 3% of the revenue.
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The stability provided by these sources of revenue means recycling will continue to make a difference in our community.

​Originally published June 30/21 The Reminder. Flin Flon, Mb. Sponsored by North of 53 Consumers Coop.

The recyclables from the Main Street and park bins were emptied last week.

These public bins are great. They collect recyclables and they advertise that our community recycles. 

These free bins are supported by the enviro levy on beverage containers.

It is important to have the option of garbage or recycling with bins in public spaces.

The dual bins on Main St. have reduced the amount of garbage in the recycling bins significantly although they can still be very messy to process.

The bins in the parks often are very gross. There is no other word to adequately describe them.

Unlike some communities who throw out the public spaces recycling because it is so awful, I believe people have put recyclables in the bins believing they will be recycled. We must honour the trust they have placed in us.

The Recycling Centre staff can deal with them but I often feel sorry for them and process them myself.  As a ‘farm girl’ my tolerance of smelly things is well developed.  
The main causes of the smell and ‘grossness’ are bags people use to clean up after their dogs, diapers and old food mixed in with all the good recyclables. Liquids leaking from beverage containers add to the mess.

Most cardboard or paper items end up in the garbage because they are too wet unless they are in a plastic bag that protects them.

The City of Flin Flon has placed garbage containers beside the recycling bins that were standing alone. Hopefully this will decrease the amount of mess.
​
The Environment Council has ordered two dual bins like those on Main Street for the Bellevue and North Avenue overlooks.  

Originally published June 9/21 The Reminder. Flin Flon, Mb. Sponsored by North of 53 Consumers Coop.

​It is very encouraging to see so many individuals, businesses and institutions recycling. The Recycling Centre is very busy. The tonnage this year reflects this as we were 31 tonnes ahead of last year at the end of May.

It is also great to see people selling and giving things away they no longer want that are still good to use.

It’s definitely better for the planet.

What happens next to this waste that is being kept out of landfills is important to making the system work.

The environmental benefits are not usually the bottom line. Money, regulation and consumer demand are.

Some kinds of reusing and recycling are well established. Second hand shops, garage sales, donations or giveaways have been happening for years.  

Metal recycling has been done for decades.

The end use of other materials has been a challenge. It is encouraging to see packaging and other things with a label that a percentage of recycled materials was used in making the item.

When oil prices drop the market for recycled plastic gets worse. When there is too much cardboard on the market, we may have to pay to have it recycled.

More recently, communities that are composting are saying they need an end market for it. The community cannot use all they produce.

Regulation helps. In the US regulation requires that all office paper that is manufactured contains a percentage of recycled materials. With no regulation in Canada, most office paper is recycled into disposable paper products.
​
What people buy makes a difference. Shop at second hand stores. Buy products made of recycled materials. Look for ways to make the next step happen. 

Originally published June 2/21 The Reminder. Flin Flon, Mb. Sponsored by North of 53 Consumers Coop.

We have tried several new things in the last few months with mixed results.

The first was reducing the price for of the red bags needed for curbside pickup service in Flin Flon from $3.50 to $2.75. The sale price is held over until June 15 to encourage more to participate.

Curbside is better in several ways. We can predict when the recyclables come in. It reduces the number of unwanted items, the time needed to empty the trailer and the mess created there.

For example, three people spent an hour cleaning out the trailer and the driver spent another hour picking it up and taking it back and parking it when it was brought to the Centre for a thorough cleaning this week.

This had been done two weeks ago. A truckload or two of bags and cardboard had been removed almost every day since then.

Besides the closed bags and boxes, there was 15 large bags (40”x65”) of loose recyclables along with a weed eater, vacuum cleaner, window blind, light fixtures, two garden hoses, part of a car bumper, a broom and two bags of garbage.

We have tried placing a new information sign on the trailer to help prevent the mess.   
We tried providing a lot of information about recycling to homes with a flier delivered by Canada Post at the end of March. There have been many positive comments. Quite a few have been returned in recycling bags.

We encourage reusing things by saving containers, egg cartons, magazines, coffee containers, jars and other items for that people ask for.

Reusing is more important than recycling. It is another way we try to make a difference.
  

Originally published May 26/21 The Reminder. Flin Flon, Mb. Sponsored by North of 53 Consumers Coop.

I became familiar with the term ‘nesting’ when training to become an Early Childhood Educator. Learning how to nest items is one of the basic skills young children learn.

An example of children’s nesting toys are boxes or barrels that come in graduated sizes so the small ones fit inside the bigger ones. The challenge is to get them in the right order so they all fit inside the biggest one.

A grown-up example would be measuring cups or serving bowls that nest together. They take up less space in the cupboard.

What does nesting have to do with recycling?

It’s not quite the same as the above examples and it is a problem not a fun game or cupboard organizer.

It describes one kind of recyclable placed inside another.  

Recyclables often arrive nested. Some examples are cans inside tissue boxes, aluminum cans inside tin cans, cans inside of plastic clam shells, plastics and jars inside cereal boxes and garbage nested in boxes.

We bale recyclables and ship them to Winnipeg where they are separated from a moving conveyor belt. Nesting makes sorting very difficult especially as the materials have been squished in the baling process.

Materials may fall inside others during the baling process. It is hard to avoid so we try to make the situation better by separating nested items before they are baled. 

Nesting the same materials is fine. Examples are flattened boxboard boxes (like cereal boxes) inside one boxboard box or smaller tin cans inside a larger one. 
​
I’m guessing people nest items to save space in the recycling bag. A better way to accomplish this is to flatten boxes, large pop bottles and milk containers.

Originally published May 19/21 The Reminder. Flin Flon, Mb. Sponsored by North of 53 Consumers Coop.

​Last year’s column ‘Spring 2020’ described changes the pandemic had brought to recycling operations in the previous two months.  This year the pandemic is part of the context of everything with hope that will change in the next few months.

The Recycling Centre is very busy. Fifty tonnes were processed in both March and April. Only one month was over 50 tonnes in all of 2020.

This year’s total tonnage is ahead of 2020 by more than 25 tonnes.

Half of it is office paper which includes the shredded paper coming from HB and other places.

Cardboard is also increasing. Some of it could be more boxes because of online shopping, but it seems that more businesses are recycling their cardboard.

The really good news is amount of print and packaging materials sent to Winnipeg for sorting is almost three tonnes ahead of last year.  This tonnage had been steadily decreasing since March 2018, probably because of fewer newspapers in the mix.

Judging from the rate recyclables are being dropped off at the trailer and the Centre and this increase in weight, it seems more households are recycling.

The total in this category is still 9 tonnes behind March 2018 but is moving in the right direction.  

Beverage containers have increased noticeably in the past year.

The big news this month is the sale price for the red bags used for curbside pickup in Flin Flon. The price is $2.75 instead of $3.50. If there are 20 new users, this could be the regular price of the Wednesday morning service. New users should call the Centre to ensure they are on the route. 
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For more information call us at (204) 687-6169

September total – 50,090 kg
       
        Aluminum – 617 kg
        Commingled* - 11,100 kg
        Office Paper – 5,873 kg
        Cardboard – 27,049 kg
        Glass – 4,038 kg
        Books –   1,403 kg
       

Total for 2021 – 434,131 kg
Total for 2020 – 394,707 kg
Difference – +39,424 kg


E – waste – a load was shipped September 28. The weight is still not known. 
 
Batteries –56 kg

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