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Earth week 2013 Accounting for trash A look at what and how Yellowknifers recycleLaura Busch Northern News Services Published Friday, April 19, 2013
The recycling industry has improved its technology in recent years, making it easier to re-purpose materials such as mixed plastic, said Peter Houweling, assistant superintendent of Yellowknife's Solid Waste Facility.
"It's not as picky as it used to be," he told Yellowknifer during a visit to the site's recycling facilities earlier this month.
Most of the city's recyclables - such as plastics, cardboard and paper - are baled at the waste facility and then trucked south, 30 to 33 bales at a time, to Alberta in empty back-loads - which is a term for trucks that have already delivered their commercial load and would otherwise be going back empty, Houweling said.
Some materials, such as hazardous waste, are processed here in the NWT.
Standard household recyclables are collected at six recycling depots around the city, including one near the salvage area at the dump.
For the most part, users of the recycling depots are good about ensuring the proper item goes in the proper bin, said Houweling, adding it is usually easy enough for workers to pull large pieces of the wrong item from a blue bin as necessary.
However, there is a 10 per cent contaminant maximum at most recycling plants, and there is currently no means to sort recyclables from non-recyclables in Yellowknife.
This means that if a blue bin is overly contaminated by too many tin cans in a mixed paper bin, for example, all contents of the bin will go into the landfill, Houweling said. However, since taking his new position last September, not a single blue bin has gone to the landfill, he added.
"We find our Yellowknife users do really well (at sorting their recyclables)," he said. "Maybe it's because those who are going to the depots are more eco-minded."
While sorting at the blue bins may not be a problem, the regular household garbage arriving at the facility is usually rife with recyclables that do not get sorted out before going to the landfill, he said. Houweling also singled out Yellowknife businesses, saying there are too many that put recyclables, organic waste and other garbage together, making it impossible to recycle.
Some items, such as glass, are collected and sorted but not sent south, he said. This is because there isn't enough volume of these materials coming into the facility.
"It can take you two years to fill a trailer. So, we want to focus our efforts on the items like cardboard, that comprise roughly 25 per cent of our waste stream," said Houweling. "We're going to follow the worst contributors first, so that's why (some items aren't sent away). It's not that we're not interested or not aware, it's that we want to put our efforts into items that will make the biggest difference."
Styrofoam is another example of a material that is not currently recycled here because of volume, he said.
When talking about recycling in Yellowknife, the conversation inevitably turns to salvaging, which Houweling said he and others at the dump encourage, although he recognizes there is public confusion over what can be salvaged now that the Solid Waste Facility is being re-organized.
To help clear up some of these misconceptions, as well as gather public input on upcoming projects at the Solid Waste Facility, Houweling is hosting a public forum as part of the city's Earth Week activities beginning at 7 p.m. next Tuesday, at Northern United Place.
Recycling in Yellowknife (in 2012)
Source: Peter Houweling, assistant superintendent of Solid Waste Facility
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