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The British Columbia government has given the green light to a recycling program to collect more plastic items.
Starting in 2023, carrier and material recovery facility (MRF) operators in British Columbia will begin collecting, sorting and finding recycling locations for a long list of other end-of-life plastic products.
“These items include products that are typically thrown away after a single or single use, such as plastic sandwich bags or disposable party cups, bowls and plates.”
The agency said the new rules “are independent of the federal ban on the manufacture and import of single-use plastics, which went into effect December 20, 2022. also provide for the waiver of the ban on recall.”
The extensive list of items to be collected in the mandatory blue bins is dominated by plastic, but there are some non-plastic items as well. The full list includes plastic plates, bowls and cups; plastic cutlery and straws; plastic containers for food storage; plastic hangers (supplied with clothes); paper plates, bowls and cups (thin plastic lined) aluminum foil; foil baking dish and pie tins. and thin-walled metal storage tanks.
The ministry has determined that more items are optional for blue trash cans but are now welcome at recycling centers in the province. The list includes plastic bags for sandwiches and freezers, plastic shrink wrap, flexible plastic sheets and lids, flexible plastic bubble wrap (but not bubble wrap liners), flexible plastic recyclable bags (used to collect garbage on roadside) and reusable soft plastic shopping bags. .
“By expanding our country-leading recycling system to include more products, we are removing more plastic from our waterways and landfills,” said Aman Singh, the provincial council’s environmental secretary. “People across the province are now able to recycle more single-use plastics and other materials in their blue bins and recycling stations. This builds on the significant progress we’ve made with the CleanBC Plastics action plan.”
“This expanded list of materials will allow more materials to be recycled, kept out of landfills and not polluted,” said Tamara Burns, executive director of the nonprofit Recycle BC. storage plays a key role in their processing.”
The British Columbia Department of Environment and Climate Change says the province regulates the most household packaging and products in Canada through its Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) program. The scheme also “encourages and encourages companies and manufacturers to create and design less harmful plastic packaging,” the ministry said in a statement.
The announced changes to blue bins and recycling centers “are effective immediately and are part of the CleanBC Plastics action plan, which aims to change the way plastics are developed and used from temporary and disposable to durable,” the ministry wrote. ”