Recycle BC is testing out the collection of soft plastics — including plastic bags and packaging — from some homes in the capital region.
The local program began Aug. 1 with collection bins placed at several multi-family residential buildings. The bins were placed next to existing recycling bins and are emptied twice a week.
West Vancouver buildings have also received the bins, and there are plans to bring them to Maple Ridge next year — along with Recycle BC’s first curbside pickup for soft plastics, also known as flexible plastics.
Recycle BC’s Maja Rusinowska said the aim is to get more people recycling soft plastics, only about 20 per cent of which are currently recycled.
“We really want to increase those recovery rates,” Rusinowska said.
Until now, Recycle BC collected soft plastics largely through its network of 250 recycling depots. A previous pilot project in West Vancouver showed more soft plastics are recycled when they are collected directly from homes.
“We’re always striving for positive environmental impacts and doing what we can to responsibly recycle household packaging and paper,” said Rusinowska, whose organization manages residential packaging and paper recycling in B.C.
“We’re just working to make residents’ lives easier by slowly rolling this out,” she said. “Multi-family is the first go at this.”
Soft plastics have historically been hard to recycle because they include a wide mix of products, Recycle BC said, but research with Merlin Plastics led to “a breakthrough moment” in 2022.
The Lower Mainland facility recycles a variety of soft plastics into pellets that have a range of applications.
“This solution combines the hard-to-recycle plastic with better-quality recycled plastic to produce a commodity that can be used in a wide variety of manufacturing applications,” Recycle BC said in a statement. “This allowed for a unified collection category for all flexible plastics, simplifying the recycling process for residents.”
The CRD has an extensive list of recyclable soft plastics on its website, including candy wrappers, chip and cereal bags, wet-wipe dispenser bags, net-plastic bags and bread bags. The list can be accessed through crd.bc.ca/service/waste-recycling.
Not recyclable are plastic squeeze tubes, plastic strapping, plastic rings for beer and PVC/vinyl.
