By Hayley Ferguson

City’s recycling starting to pile up without foreign buyers

Jun 7, 2019 | 4:57 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – Over the past year, China and other countries across Asia have sent the message that they no longer want to be the world’s recycling bin after years of receiving contaminated materials

That message has hit Canada hard.

Medicine Hat is feeling it too, according to the city and their partner Environmental 360 Solutions.

“Trying to market this material is an ongoing challenge that we face and the biggest change with China closing the doors on us. I think recyclers like us in North America are just trying to find new challenges of where to move the material,” said E360S district manager Randy Wong.

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With the doors closing overseas, municipalities like Medicine Hat are having to stockpile plastics and other recyclables in their work yards. There have also been times when they’ve been forced to take bales to a landfill out of town.

“That’s our last resort is doing that and certainly finding markets is our number one purpose. And when the yard gets full, it’s not full right now but when it does, then that may have to be an alternative.” Wong continued. “In talking to municipalities that’s an option they’ve had to do. Some places have smaller yards then us and just don’t have the facility that we have”

E360S is processing about 20 to 30 tonnes of plastic per month in town. 

Despite that piling up, the city’s acting general manager for environmental utilities, John Michalopoulos. says that people should continue to recycle as usual.

“For us, it’s the status quo. Continue to put your plastics one through seven in the blue bin. And our partners and us are working on solutions going forward on how we can address that short term and long term.” He said.

E360S is asking for people to help though to make the town’s recycling more valuable to the international market.

“The biggest challenge we have is not all plastics coming in here are recyclable.” Wong stated. “So we’re asking people, make sure that it has that symbol with number one through seven, recycle symbol on it. If it does, certainly put it in the recycling bin and let us process it because we can move that stuff.”

Although the yard has been overflowing with that plastic over the past eight months, E360S says that they have had a promising week, sending out a number of bales to a potential vendor in Calgary to see if it’s materials they want to buy.