Edmontonians are passionate, proud recyclers. Due to the relative ease of the all-in-one-blue-bag recycling program, about 90% of single family residents and 80% of the apartment/condo dwellers have been diligent participants in the program. It is obvious that the same percentages do not apply to City residents’ commitment to other “green” life choices such as carpooling, water conservation, composting, or say…cutting down on air travel. I’m not trying to guilt trip, I’m simply pointing out that recycling is our low hanging green behaviour fruit; and since it is the easiest way for us to alleviate a bit of our environmental cognitive dissonance, we tend to take it more seriously (but not too seriously).
That said, who hasn’t asked “Can I recycle ?” at one point or another. The City posts on its website a detailed breakdown of which materials go into Recycling or Garbage vs. what needs to be taken to an Eco Station. Realistically though, not everyone wants to consult the full list every time they are stumped by an obscure type of packaging that appears to be potentially recyclable. Come on! Just tell me if I can recycle this pizza box or not; and what about those clear plastic containers that the strawberries are sold in?
As an employee of the Edmonton Waste Management Centre (EWMC), here is my expert response: use your best judgment and let us take care of the rest.
Our recycling process is designed, and runs with a lot of forgiveness - in other words, it’s flexible. The recycling plant uses a combination of mechanical processes (i.e. screening, magnets, electromagnetic currents – I’m serious!) and manual sorting to separate the co-mingled blue bag material into the different material types: cardboard, paper, glass, metals and plastics. A bit of contamination is expected and permitted by the downstream markets which take these materials from us and turn them into new products.
What all of this means is that if the packaging container in question is dry and relatively clean, just toss it in. If the pizza or take-out box has a little grease stain, toss it in. Well, how big does the grease stain have to be before it can’t be recycled, you ask? Use reasonable judgment. You should know better than to throw out a pizza box with gobs of cheese or slices of pizza stuck to it.
However, there are some definite NO NO items, specifically stringy things such as Christmas lights, garden hoses, wires, etc. These items can get wrapped around and caught on the conveyor belts and pulleys in the plant, causing motors to burn out, other damages, and production delays that can easily be in the tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars range.
You may have also heard that shredded paper should go into garbage not recycling. This is also TRUE. The recycling equipment is not designed to handle tiny pieces of paper. Shredded paper will either stick to the conveyor belts which could have sticky juice or pop stains, or fly off the belts due to its lightweight. Put the stuff in your garbage and it will be composted just like the food and yard waste.
There is so much more that I can divulge, but there is no better way to understand the processes, and to increase your own recycling competency than to see the plant, in its full magnificence, in person. In fact this upcoming Saturday, June 12th, from 9AM to 4 PM, we will be hosting an Open House for the general public. Come on down with friends and beloveds to take in one of the many tours, scheduled to run every 25 minutes, and see all the different ways in which our city is conserving energy and resources through progressive waste management. Other stops on the tour include: North America’s largest co-composting facility – that’s where your garbage goes to become top quality compost), the e-waste recycling plant, education and research facilities, and the future site of the world’s first municipal waste to biofuels facility. Everyone raves about Edmonton’s recycling program, but that is just the tip of the ice berg of what makes the EWMC the most state-of-the-art waste management site in North America. So come and see beyond the recycling; come see the big picture. You won’t be disappointed.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Excellent article!
Hang on though, are you saying that organic items put into the garbage are composted and not put in a landfill? A lot of people in Edmonton tend to think that there are people going through our bags of garbage to extract recyclables and compostable organics – which is a reason they give to not recycling or composting themselves.
I am an avid recycler and Eco-Station user. I do find Edmonton’s approach to recycling very different from what I’m used to, being originally from Vancouver – where the resident is supposed to think about exact types of plastic (for example) before deciding to put that container in the recycling bin or not.
I always thought that Edmonton’s more laissez-faire approach to using ‘your judgment’ when recycling was susceptible to people overloading it by attempting to recycle wrong types of things. But.. perhaps it’s more fault tolerant than I assumed.
Will definitely check out the open house.
Hi Imran:
All residential garbage indeed goes through the composting facility. Again, a combination of manual sorting, and screening is used to remove items that are not compostable. Yes, there are people that first go through the garbage to remove things like lawn chairs, beer coolers, couch cushions, etc. After that large rotating, trommel screens are used to separate the non-compostable items from the organic fraction, which luckily tend to be of smaller particle size. Of course, some contaminants (i.e. plastics and glass) will remain with the organics during the composting process, however the finished compost product will get screened once or twice more to remove whatever wasn’t removed prior to the composting. (This is just a simplied explanation, if you go to the Open House, then you will get to see all the steps in the process).
Ultimately, the compost could still have very tiny pieces of plastic and glass in it, but this will not affect its efficacy as a soil amendment.
Lastly, people SHOULD NOT throw their recyclables into the garbage. Other than very large cardboard boxes or metal cans, recyclables can not be very effectively/efficiently extracted out of the garbage process stream, and they get too dirty when they’re mixed in with the garbage.
Jenny