YELLOWKNIFE - In a busy week the Yellowknife Bottle Depot processes 5,376 dozen beer empties, but according to manager Adam Pich, nearly an equivalent amount of glass ends up being crushed and trucked off by NWT Parks for use as landfill.

Yellowknife Bottle Shop boss Adam Pich says if bottlers went plastic for 100 per cent of their products, it would drastically reduce the amount of glass that ends up being used as landfill. - Jason Unrau/NNSL photo

Pich estimated that the depot receives 20 to 25 tonnes worth of non-recyclable glass each week.

"The thing is it's not going to change until consumers start putting pressure on suppliers and producers, ‘We aren't going to buy your product unless it's recyclable,'" Pich said while sorting through containers to illustrate his point.

Apart from milk containers, all plastic bottles the depot receives are recyclable and end up compacted into bales for shipment south. However, what is amazing to Pich are the bottlers who continue to use glass that is not returnable, when plastic equivalents - by volume and even shape - already exist.

"This I can recycle," he said holding up a plastic Gatorade bottle. "This same bottle but (made of) glass I have to crush. It just doesn't make any sense."

For consumers that strive to be environmentally friendly, avoiding Corona and what Pich calls ‘coolers' (bottled liquor drinks such as Mike's Hard Lemonade and bloody mary's) would lighten his glass-crushing load. However, hard liquor and wine bottles are on the list of unwanted glass too and wine lovers, including Pich, shudder at the thought of buying wine in plastic bags.

That said, Pich argued that some things need to change.

"We're calling it recycling but (for those containers) that's only a one-time deal," he said adding that your typical brown beer bottle can be recycled up to 10 times before it ends up in a crusher.

Since its Nov. 2005 start, the territories' cash-for-recyclables program has recovered more than 23 million containers and Pich estimates that the Yellowknife Bottle Depot has processed 10 million of those items.

While Emery Paquin, director of environmental protection at Environment and Natural Resources, told News/North in November last year that residents would have the chance to discuss further recycling measures to be taken, Pich has his own ideas and it's not for dairy containers.

"Include (a deposit charge to) fast food beverage containers because they're all over the place, and I think grocery bags and all that stuff," he said. "But by god, don't send me any milk containers... could you imagine the smell in here?"