YELLOWKNIFE - It is said the road to hell is paved with good intentions and in Industry, Tourism and Investment's case, its well-intentioned plan to recycle began at the bottle depot, stopped at Long Lake and from there went straight to the municipal landfill with 180 tonnes of smashed-up glass.

The department has proposed building a $1 million full-hookup RV park on the land adjacent to Folk on the Rocks (FOTR) festival site. It began piling what they call "crushed glass" there over the winter to be used as fill during construction. Previously, this non-returnable material was dumped at the landfill.

"It has a definite application but you have to be able to stockpile it in significant quantities to be able to do something with it," said regional superintendent Phil Lee, explaining the department's plan to divert the glass from the dump. "The whole intent behind the recycling depot is you recycle the product."

However, protestations from FOTR members angry over ITI's RV park plans and dumping what members viewed as garbage at the location - used as a parking lot during the annual weekend festival - prompted Lee to have the glass removed following a public meeting the department's plans for the park, April 11.

Adam Pich, bottle depot manager, told Yellowknifer the government had been taking the crushed glass from him since October of last year. While much of the glass the depot offers cash returns for is sent south for recycling, some coloured glass, wine and hard liquor bottles remain unwanted, and are crushed and shipped to the landfill at $30 a tonne.

ITI had hoped to save between $8,000-$9,000 by using the glass at the proposed RV park site as fill, said Lee. By Yellowknifer's calculations, hauling the 180 tonnes of glass to the dump cost the department $5,400.

"We were working with the government to reduce our impact on the landfill," said Pich who estimates that for every glass bottle recycled at the depot, the equivalent amount ends up crushed. "And since January there was nothing from here going to the landfill. Now, it's all going back there."

Pich estimates the depot produces 14 tonnes of crushed glass each month.