Brodie Thomas
Northern News Services
Published Thursday, June 19 2008

Radilih Koe'/Fort Good Hope - Residents in Fort Good hope are discovering that it pays to recycle their beverage containers thanks to the teachers at Chief T'Selihye school.

Two programs at the Chief T'Selihye school are helping keep waste out of landfills. The bottle collection program makes money for the school and teaches students about recycling. The school also plans to host a hazardous material drop-off day so things like paint and engine fluids will be properly disposed of outside the community.

Since September, teachers and students have been running the community's recycling program. In most other NWT communities, the licence to act as a bottle depot goes to the local band or a business. But in Fort Good Hope the school decided to take on the job.

"The school has the licence to operate in the community. We're doing extremely well. We've kept at least the equivalent of 10 sea can containers in beverage containers out of the landfill," said teacher Harry MacNeil.

"We started with one sea container. It was provided free by NTCL. Right now we have three and they're completely full. ENR is going to provide us with a fourth one," he said.

MacNeil said the three full containers will go down on the first barge later this month. Throughout the year they have been transporting bags of cans back on Buffalo airways, and on the winter road.

"I think we sent 21 or 23 bags out on the winter road," said MacNeil

The school hosts drop-off nights every second week throughout the year, either on a weekday evening or a Saturday afternoon. At first the concept was slow to catch on in the community. The school pays community members for each bottle and can that is dropped off. They in turn make that money back and a bit more when they ship the bottles and cans south.

"I think it was just $39 that we paid out at the first pickup. The last time we did it we paid out over $2,400," said MacNeil.

The school uses the money to buy supplies that are not covered under their regular budget.

"There are some people who save up their cans for three or four months and they might get $300 at one time," said MacNeil.

Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) grants the licences to collect bottles. Solid waste specialist Diep Duong said the NWT's beverage program has been successful and cost effective.

"Overall the program is quite revenue neutral. It's not losing money and it's not getting money from government every year to help fund the program. It requires only deposits and surcharges from the point of sale," she said.

Duong said there are lots of benefits on which we cannot put a price. Bottle collection programs result in less litter around communities and less waste in the dumps.

MacNeil said students are learning about the environment from the program. Students will often volunteer to help with drop off days.

Thanks to a $5,000 grant from Shell Canada, the school plans to work with ENR to hold a hazardous waste pickup day this fall.

"We're hoping we'll be able to incorporate it into our experiential science program that we're going to be offering our Grade 10s next year," said MacNeil. He said the town's landfill is really close to the river. By giving people a place to drop off dangerous household goods such as used oil and paint, it will prevent dangerous chemicals from leaking into the water.

"We were having a lot of difficulty transporting the material out because it has to be in special UN approved sealed containers," said MacNeil.

ENR will help with supplying the containers for the pickup day. The waste will probably go out on the winter road.