New recycling waste of time

News that Recycle BC is expanding curb-side collection to include a pink and a grey boxes makes me roll my eyes as we put more and more effort and expenditure into achieving virtually nothing.

Let me state at the outset recycling, in principle, is a good idea. The problem is it has become a multi-billion dollar industry that feeds off the goodwill—and to some extent the gullibility—of governments and residents. There are indeed some products that can be successfully and economically recycled but a huge percentage of what goes in our blue bins is actually just trash.

Aluminum and glass is all recyclable and is used to make products that we need and use. Paper and cardboard are also recyclable but the energy and resources needed to recycle them means that it is not necessarily a benefit to the environment. If they were processed locally it would make a huge difference. But most of the cardboard collected is sent to Vancouver and then shipped to China.

If we factor in the emissions from the collection trucks—from the trucks that transport it to the coast, the ships that take it to China and from the trucks in China that take it to the processing plant, is it helping the environment?

Then there is plastic. The plastics industry scored a huge public relations victory years ago when it adopted the triangle symbol, which is stamped on all hard plastic products. It has numbers from 1-7 in the centre of the triangle to identify the resin used in manufacturing which make us believe they are all being recycled in some way. They are not.

Numbers 1 and 2 can be recycled into useful products but to some extent these are already covered by the deposit system. However, numbers 3 to 7 are essentially garbage. The plastics industry has known this for 40 years and the recycling industry obviously knows it too. In fact only nine per cent of plastic globally is recycled, the rest is dumped in landfills, incinerated, of worse still shipped to other countries. Canada's recycling percentage is slightly better at 16 per cent, possibly due to the deposit program for plastic bottles.

If the recycling industry was making products that were in demand then they would be able to make a profit and operate without government help, but the plastics industry wants clean virgin plastic, not something that looks dirty and actually costs more. So, it is the taxpayers who are on the hook for the cost of recycling. The fact is, there is a glut of virgin plastic in North America at a fraction of the cost of recycled resin. So, which is the industry most likely to use?

I agree that driving to Kent Road (in Kelowna) is not a great way to recycle glass. It merely generates thousands of unnecessary vehicle trips. Putting out thousands of boxes with a handful of glass jars in each one is not very efficient either.

The Regional District of Central Okanagan should look at installing bottle banks at large grocery stores, a method that has been used successfully in the U.K. for more than 30 years. They could be located close to the entrance of the store, so when you go to buy your groceries, you could just pop the empty bottles in the dumpster. In this way, there would be no unnecessary trips required.

I'm sure the grocery stores would provide space free of charge since they are the ones largely responsible for the plastic use. That would eliminate the need for the grey boxes.

The pink boxes are a waste of time because most of what goes in there will end up in a landfill somewhere. Why not save us all the trouble and expense and simply put that stuff in the black bin?

When something isn't working, it's best to take a step back and rethink rather than double down on it.

Peter Emery, Kelowna

(Editor's note: Recycling in the Central Okanagan is funded by Recycle BC, a non-profit organization funded by businesses that supply packaging and paper to B.C. residents, not through direct municipal taxes.)