Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Apr 12/02) - Not many people would stay at their jobs if the paycheque stopped coming in, but that's exactly what Barbara Armstrong has done.

Armstrong is Inuvik's Recycling Coordinator and was brought North to work a one -year term position that, theoretically, would lead to full time through the project's initiatives.

Barbara Armstrong sorts through a mountain of pop and beer cans at the Inuvik Recycling depot at their landfill location. - Terry Halifax/NNSL photo

The plan was that her position would be continued to be paid through the deposits earned through recycling or from support from the town, but since neither of those happened, Armstrong is working without pay.

She's decide to stay on out of her commitment and belief in the project.

"I'm very interested in the initiative and I want to see the things that I started moving forward," Armstrong said.

She's since taken a job with the Inuvualuit Regional Corporation as a contaminants consultant.

Originally from a farming community outside London, Ont. she returned to school as an adult, to get her degree in environmental management at Western University.

Her children now grown, she said she always wanted to come North, but admits she had never planned to come this far north.

"It's been a great adventure so far," she says, smiling.

She spends her days in one of two contrasting environments: either at the dump sorting recyclables or in the office drumming up support for the program or securing funding for new initiatives.

The biggest (and dirtiest) part of the job is sorting through the heaps of garbage at the landfill.

One of the main drives of the society was to issue the public clear plastic bags to put their recyclables in. Then they just place the clear bags in the dumpster with the other garbage.

For now, the society is concentrating on drink boxes and cans, but has future plans paper and cardboard.

"Generally we focus on single serving beverage containers, like pop cans, juice containers that come in the little or larger tetra boxes and those water containers," she said. "All the plastics that are marked on the bottom with a one or a two."

The depot will also take plastic milk jugs and beer cans. At the landfill, employees of the town or Armstrong will pull the recylables from the general pile and Armstrong sorts and stores the items for shipment.

People can also deliver their recycling right to the depot at the landfill.

"We prefer that, then we don't have to pull them out of the general pile," Armstrong said. "Some people actually take the time to sort their own products and hallelujah for that."

She also works with the local Scout troop to help teach recycling and help them raise funds. The Scouts place the bins around special events sites to collect bottles and cans they ship out for the deposit money.

"We provide the bins and they are responsible for picking them up," Armstrong said.

A town initiative has placed two-sided receptacles along main street that people can put their garbage in one side and recylables in the other.

"Most of the garbage found along main street is recyclable," Armstrong said. "It's most often pop and water containers, so that's a good thing the town has done for us."

She says the society is also grateful for the town allowing them to set up the recycling depot at the landfill.

On the business end of things, she says the are currently working with the territorial government on deposit legislation that will greatly help the program.

"They've taken ideas on how provinces around us work with their recycling programs," she said. "We've always felt that the deposit would be our saviour, because as soon as there is some monetary value based on recyclable products if will fuel all the other things that don't have much value attached."

Items like paper and cardboard could be processed at a loss, if a profit could be made from the cans and bottles.

Once enough has been saved up for a truckload, the plastics and cans are trucked to a processing facility in Whitehorse. Pop cans are crushed into blocks and plastics are chipped for later reuse.

Since they only receives a processing fee and not a deposit fee for the goods, it actually costs more to ship than the fee pays. She says it takes about five months to save up enough containers to fill a truck.

The society is currently looking for a new carrier who will back-haul the material, since their former carrier, Robinson Trucking, has quit hauling out of Inuvik. As the society is a non-profit organization, a new carrier could use the back-haul as a tax deduction.