Stephanie McDonald
Northern News Services
Published Monday, November 26, 2007

NUNAVUT - A ground-breaking recycling project is gaining traction in Rankin Inlet, but stalling in Iqaluit. However, long-term costs could kill them both.

Nunavut's Department of Environment has extended its recycling pilot project – which began in August in Rankin and the capital – to the end of March 2008.

The program pays out five cents for every plastic and aluminum beverage container handed in. Rankin Inlet has had success with the program, while Iqalummiut have been slow to embrace it.

As of the end of October, Rankin Inlet, despite a population less than half of Iqaluit's, had collected 146,000 containers, compared to Iqaluit's 87,000.

"There's probably another 30,000 to 40,000 since then," said Rankin Inlet SAO Paul Waye.

He said the success of the Rankin Inlet project could be due to the efforts of a part-time worker the town hired to collect containers for four hours a day between Tuesday and Friday.

There were also advertisements about the program on the local radio and posters were put up around town. The Iqaluit depot is open for seven hours on Saturdays alone.

"There's a core group of people that are heavily involved in it that come in a couple times of week. They collect cans and bottles from around the community," Waye said.

The Government of Nunavut gave the community two sea cans to collect the recyclables and they will be sent to a southern recycler on next summer's sealift, Waye said.

Minister of Environment Patterk Netser describes the preliminary results of the Iqaluit project "disappointing."

The city chose not to run the program, so it was contracted out to the South East Nunavut Company, owned by Bryan Hellwig. The company already does beer can recycling through a facility in the south.

"There's about 10 or 12 million beverage containers that go through Iqaluit, so 87,000 isn't very much," Hellwig said.

He said that few have brought beverage containers in to him this month, as everyone thought the project had finished at the end of October.

He expects that the Department of Environment will be doing the bulk of advertising to let Iqaluimmiut know that the project has been extended a further five months, and he has posted a few posters around town.

As in Rankin Inlet, the collected goods are being stored in sea cans and will be shipped south next year.

Hellwig said that it's next to impossible to find a buyer who will accept unbaled and uncleaned plastic containers and there is no facility in Iqaluit to do the job.

Luckily, he said, his buyer for aluminum has agreed to take the plastic, only because they have worked together for so long.

"Shipping costs are a real drag," Hellwig said.

Unless the GN picks up the $3,200 tab for shipping a sea can out of Nunavut, the recycling initiative won't be sustainable, he said.

Netser agreed, saying there isn't enough volume of recyclables in the territory to make any long-term program work.

"We'd like to do it, but the shipping costs are too high," Netser said. "It will most likely never happen."