Tour of Materials Recycling Facility, and Bottle Recycling Facility in Cranbrook

In late October, a small and enthusiastic group from Kimberley, BC went on a tour of the Materials Recycling Facility as well as the Bottle Recycling Facility in Cranbrook. The very interesting and informative tour was presented by Loree Duczek, the Communications Manager for the RDEK.

The first stop on our tour was the Materials Recycling Facility. This is where all the materials collected in the yellow recycle bins for the entire East Kootenay region are brought to be sorted, compressed, and baled, and then sold to commercial facilities to be made into other products. This facility is run by a company called South Sky which is owned by Southeast Contracting. Recycling is an absolutely necessary thing for communities to be doing, but can be an expensive process. At times, part of the cost is subsidized by the RDEK, by means of a guaranteed minimum price so that recycling is able to continue despite fluctuations in the end price for the recycled products. Even through the recent economic downturn, the Cranbrook facility was able to continue recycling at full capacity, though other facilities in the province were not.
Participation in the yellow bins has been increasing year by year; however, waste volumes going to the land fill are not yet decreasing. Currently, by weight, about 57% of recycled material is cardboard, 36% is paper, and the remainder is plastic, metal, and glass. Unfortunately, generally about 7-9% (mostly unmarked plastic) of the material placed in the yellow bins is not recyclable, and ends up in the landfill.
With the aid of conveyor belts and other equipment, the large cardboard is sorted from the other materials (small cardboard, boxboard, plastics, metal cans, and garbage). A magnet is then used to pull the metal out. The remaining materials are then sorted by hand on a conveyor belt to remove the refundable beverage containers and garbage, and then sorted into various plastics (ie. food containers, milk bottles, grocery bags), paper and cardboard. Once sorted, the various products are compressed and baled in order to get them ready to be sent to facilities to be sorted further and then made into other products. The RDEK has a mandate to keep their recycled materials within North America. Currently, most of the materials go to the lower mainland of BC and just across the U.S. border to Washington.
Glass is handled separately from the other recyclables and has its own “glass only” yellow bin. The glass is crushed and then sent to Airdrie, AB to be made into insulation, road & sign paint (to give reflective qualities), as well as being used as a bulking agent in sand traps at golf courses. Only food grade container glass (any colour) is acceptable for recycling; other glass is not pure glass and is not acceptable for recycling. A whole load of glass can be refused if it is contaminated with plastic, ceramic or metal, as these contaminates can ruin the equipment used to process the material.
The next stop on the tour was the Bottle Recycling Facility. This is the facility that handles the materials collected at the Bottle Depots in all of the East and West Kootenays. Beer bottles are sorted and sent to the bottling plants at Creston and Kelowna, where they will be washed and reused. Milk cartons and tetra pacs are compressed and baled and sent to Delta. 5000 to 8000 large bags of plastic pop bottles are compressed and baled per day in the Cranbrook facility, and then sent to Calgary. Pop and beer cans are crushed, baled and sent away to Vancouver for processing in separate facilities. In Cranbrook, the rate of return of returnable cans and bottles is very high at 94 – 96%.
Basic recycling instructions are available on the RDEK Recycling website http://www.rdek.bc.ca/ and clicking on “Recycling”. However, some instructions which need to be emphasized are:

• Clean recyclable materials – wash/rinse metal cans, plastic bottles, plastic containers, milk cartons and jugs – leftover food, shampoos, lotions can contaminate the entire bin and make it all unacceptable for recycling. As well, the employees are handling the materials inside a building, and really appreciate having a clean, non-smelly place to work.
• Remove caps and lids – jar lids are not recyclable (due to the rubberized sealing ring in the lid), and should be removed from jars and disposed of in the garbage. Plastic bottle lids are made of different plastics than the plastic pop bottles and should be removed from the bottles. The bottle depots will accept pop bottle lids for recycling, however, they are not acceptable materials for the yellow recycle bins. Remove caps and other non-glass items in with the bottle glass.
• Flatten cardboard – Unflattened cardboard boxes take up much more room in the yellow recycle bins than flattened boxes. This results in there not being enough room for everyone’s recycling as well as having to have the recycle bin emptied more often, which means more trips for the recycle truck which are really unnecessary if the cardboard was flattened.
• Don’t flatten beverage cans – flattened beverage cans can cause problems with the can baler.
• Labels – it is better to remove labels from tin and aluminium cans and recycle the labels as well. However, don’t take labels off bottles – pop bottles are sent to a different place than liquor bottles, so it’s important to be able to identify them.
• Milk cartons – milk cartons and tetra pacs are not acceptable for the yellow recycle bin; however, they are accepted at bottle depots (no refund for milk cartons, but there is for tetra pacs). Please rinse thoroughly.

When asked what more can a citizen do to improve the recycling, Loree responded by saying “Do one more thing!!!” If you’re already recycling, see if there is one more thing that you’re not already recycling and do it. If you’re not recycling – start!!
And don’t forget all of the 3R’s: first REDUCE, then RE-USE, and finally RECYCLE.