N.W.T. beverage container recycling hits record low

The N.W.T.'s beverage container recycling program hit a record low in the 2020-2021 fiscal year — recovering only 62 per cent of the beverage containers that were distributed throughout the territory. 

That marks a more than 20 per cent drop from the usual recovery rate, which is in the mid-80s, according to Michelle Hannah, the territory's acting director of waste reduction and management. 

Although she doesn't have answers about what happened to those materials instead, Hannah does know why the drop happened: a combination of COVID-19 pandemic closures and delays, paired with an increase in the number of beverage containers people purchased. 

Recycling depots were closed for a couple of months starting March 19, 2020.

"Spring [and] summertime is when people are most likely to be bringing in their containers so … the fact our depots were closed for so long meant they weren't able to take in those containers at the time people would be most likely to bring them in," said Hannah.

According to the territory's annual report on waste reduction and management released this week, about 32.5 million containers were distributed between April 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021. It says that's a "dramatic increase" of 4 million more containers over the previous fiscal year. Of those, about 20.1 million were returned. 

Throughout the course of June, nine depots that serve 80 per cent of the territory's population gradually began to reopen with new health and safety protocols in place, said the report. 

"They weren't able to process as much in the same time, between not being able to have the same staff and customer capacity," said Hannah. "They worked really hard but they just couldn't catch up." 

The recovery rate is increasing, said Hannah, and as of January it was up to 71 per cent. But she's not sure it'll bounce back to the mid-80s in the 2021-2022 fiscal year. 

Difference between territory and city recycling

Unlike the City of Yellowknife's recycling program, which buries all its plastic and glass at its landfill site, Hannah said the territory has buyers for all the containers and electronics it collects. 

According to the report, refillable and non-refillable glass bottles, plastic containers and bi-metals (like tomato juice and evaporated milk cans) and electronics all go to Alberta. Tetra packs and aluminum go to Michigan and Kentucky. 

Hannah said Alberta businesses report to the province's recycling management authority — and in some cases to her department as well — about where items are going downstream. She said she's "confident" all the businesses they're working with are doing what they say they're doing with the materials. 

Last year, the City of Yellowknife sent 64 tonnes of plastic and six tonnes of glass to the landfill. Like other municipalities throughout Canada, the city struggled to find a market for used plastics after China — which used to be a primary importer of the world's recyclables — banned 24 types of recyclables and solid waste at the start of 2018.

Hannah said the territorial program has more material to sell, and it's part of a recycling affiliate network that helps it find buyers. But the fact it has recycling depots — where people bring containers to get a refund for a fee that's baked into the purchase price of an item — also makes a big difference, she said. 

"We're already starting with a cleaner, separated product," she said. 

Yellowknife also has a lot of "optimistic recyclers," she noted, who throw items that can't be recycled, like pellet bags and other types of film plastic, into the city's blue bin sorting stations in hopes that they'll be recycled somehow. She said that can "spoil a whole batch" of recycling and makes it more difficult to find a business that wants it.