City’s recycling facility finds buyer for plastics

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“We have some good news. Our containers, our plastic containers are moving. So that’s been really good. Our inventory for that commodity is down. We’ve sent three or four loads off to Vancouver and Ontario.” He said.

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Part of those plastics includes “clamshell” containers.

The city of Calgary recently announced that they would be sending an estimated 2,000 tonnes of the plastic containers to the landfill.

Officials there say they have struggled to find a buyer for them because of the labels and adhesives used on them, which require extra washing to remove.

Wong says that isn’t a problem for them for now.

“In Calgary the sort all their plastics, the one to sevens separately. And so we’ve mixed ours all in together and found a buyer to take our materials as is. And so Calgary is sorting those out and taking the high-value stuff out and I think they’re disposing of the other stuff that they may not need.” He explained.

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

Wong says he’s extremely thankful they were able to find buyers when they did.

Especially with recycling up by almost a third in the city since curbside pick up was introduced last year.

“It’s nice knowing that material is not going to landfill. We’re certainly doing our job with saving the landfill on the years it has left in it.” He said. “And so with the increase in volume that we are seeing, not the best time as far as pricing goes to have more volume. But from an environmental standpoint, we’re all happy with the program.”

Wong says that the best thing people in Medicine Hat can do to help them get the best value for their plastics is to make sure what they are putting in the blue bin is in fact recycling.

“I think the biggest thing is just cleaning up the product and not putting in materials that you only think should go in. And so we all kind of say that every plastic has a number of and if it doesn’t have that number, please don’t think it could be recycled. Put it in your garbage bin because that’s where it really should go.” He continued. “we find that some people just try and create their own program and our program is quite strict on what the next person will accept from us.”