Yellowknife (Nov 08/04) - Pop cans, plastic bags and pizza boxes: Yellowknifers throw away a lot of stuff.

So much, in fact, that the city landfill is starting to fill up fast.

"We've reached the maximum allowable height up here," said Bruce Underhay, landfill manager. "Now we're just filling in valleys."

He said the city collected about 15,000 metric tonnes of household waste last year. That's 830 kilograms for every person in Yellowknife -- the equivalent of 1,826 pounds. According to Statistics Canada, the national average was 383 kilograms of household waste per person in 2002, which means Yellowknife is producing more than twice the national average.

That's not including the approximately 15,000 metric tonnes of garbage from construction and demolition that end up in the landfill every year.

"Because the town's been growing so much, we do have more waste going in," said Greg Kehoe, the city's director of public works.

Underhay said a lot of the increase in waste is coming from construction projects, such as store expansion or house building.

But that's not the only explanation.

Three years ago, garbage trucks brought in 38 loads a week. This year, it's up to 54 loads. It takes five days -- Monday to Friday -- for the trucks to cover all of Yellowknife. The dump opened in 1974. Kehoe said the city is projecting that it will only last for another year or two.

"We're looking at moving to an adjacent lot," he said.

The city is planning to start talking to regulatory agencies and carry out a study on environmental issues in 2005.

Kehoe and Underhay were both quick to suggest the three Rs when asked what people can do to lessen their personal garbage output: reduce, reuse and recycle. "There are recycling depots around town," said Kehoe. "I'm always amazed that people don't seem to know about them."

Paper, newsprint, aluminum cans, tin cans, cloudy plastic, cardboard and glass can be dropped off at four different locations -- the city landfill, the Co-op parking lot, the Ruth Inch Memorial Pool parking lot and the corner of Franklin and School Draw Avenues.

"People make the effort to save it all up and take it to the depot, but then they put it in the wrong bins," said Underhay.

That means dump workers end up spending hours sorting through recyclables.

Sometimes there's too much garbage mixed in to be able to recycle any of it.

"I've seen everything from drywall to you name it, mixed in with the paper," Underhay said.

Katherine Silcock, Yellowknife's environmental coordinator, said the recycling program has plenty of room to grow. The amount of recycling goods coming in has increased in the past few years -- 600 tonnes in 2003 up from 400 tonnes a few years ago.

It still only adds up to a small percentage of the garbage haul.

"We don't really have the numbers that we would like to see," said Silcock.

"We do battle the public perception that nothing goes out of town."

She said all recyclables, except glass, are shipped to Edmonton to Metro Materials Recovery Inc. and other processing companies.

The city has no plans to expand the recycling program at this time, either with curb-side pick up or with more depots.