Nunavut's recycling pilot project extended again to March

The Nunavut government has extended its beverage container recycling pilot project in Iqaluit and Rankin Inlet, meaning a program that was supposed to last three months has been running for a year and a half now.

Launched in July 2007 as a three-month pilot project in the two communities, it has since been extended several times. It was most recently set to expire in October, but has been extended to run until at least the end of March.

"You have to always start somewhere," Brian Hellwig, who manages the recycling project in Iqaluit, told CBC News.

"I mean, sure, we don't have recycling programs here like we do in the south. But we've been going at it for a year and a half now, and it would be a little upsetting for a lot of people who use the service to see the service come to a complete stop again."

Even if the pilot project ends in three months, Rankin Inlet appears to be in the recycling habit for the long haul. Last fall, the central Nunavut hamlet sent five sealift containers full of crushed beverage cans out of the territory for processing down south.

Arnie Brown, Rankin Inlet's superintendent of public works, said his workers have even modified existing equipment so they can crush the cans and ship them more efficiently.

"We had a problem with volume, as far as how big it is. So we had a barrel crusher that we pretty much have completed all the crushing we have to do for a while, [and] so we have converted that into a can crusher," Brown said.

"What it does is it densifies the cans. It does a one-foot by one-foot square brick, and there's approximately 990 cans in it, so it makes it a lot easier to deal with."

Brown added that hamlet staff manufactured a solid block of steel that they welded onto the barrel crusher, as well as a box to contain the cans to be crushed.