For many homeowners, blue boxes are standard fixtures out at the curb along with the garbage cans. From there, most of us don't know where the materials end up or if there is any benefit to recycling. Some products such as aluminum are very profitable to recycle while others such as green glass may cost money to process. The question raised in recent years has been 'if it costs money then why recycle?' The answer may lie in the lesser of two dilemmas: when products are discarded and added to our landfills, the possibility of reusing them is lost forever. Also because land is a finite resource, discarding recyclable materials only adds to overburdened landfills.

What happens to blue box materials?
Aluminum is the most expensive element in your recycling box. Bauxite must be mined then heated to very high temperatures in a smelter to separate out the aluminum. The amount of energy used in the process provides a great incentive for manufacturers to recycle rather than buy raw material. Pop cans in Canada, contain anywhere between 50% and 62% recycled aluminum. Alcan boasts that the pop cans you recycle are back on store shelves within 60 days. They can also end up in car parts, baseball bats, pie plates and lawn furniture.

According to Natural Resources Canada (NRC), paper and paperboard consumption in Canada in the year 2000 was estimated at 7.9 million tonnes. The recovery rate (the amount recycled) was estimated at only 43.3% that year. Newspaper and fine paper are processed into numerous products including cardboard and household paper products. Consumer awareness is growing and more people are checking for the recycled symbol and the percentage of recycled content on labels.

Newspaper recycling has grown substantially due to increasing consumer demand. According the NRC, the use of waste paper by Canadian paper mills has increased to such an extent that these mills now import 45% of their waste paper from the United States. The NRC sees this as in indication that Canada's paper industry would welcome larger amounts of waste paper from Canadian recycling programs. Paper mills in this country recycle five million tonnes of waste paper, 2.7 million tonnes of which are generated nationally and 2.3 million tonnes of which are imported.

Glass and plastic are sometimes more expensive to collect than they are worth. Clear glass is slightly more valuable than coloured glass, however, and is easier to recycle into bottles. Mixed colour glass takes on a number of interesting forms. It can be crushed and used as aggregate in asphalt and concrete, transformed into glass blocks for construction, or used to make fibreglass insulation.

The ingredients needed to make new container glass are 60% silica sand, 20% soda ash, 15% limestone, 4% alumina silicate, 0.9% salt cake and 0.1% other trace elements. Crushed recycled glass (cullet) reduces the need for these raw materials.

The blue box program is not the only source of glass. The Liquor Control Board in British Columbia is now required to charge a deposit on everything from beer to champagne bottles. When these are returned for deposit, the responsibility of recycling is with the liquor board rather than the local municipal governments to pay for recycling. (Domestic beer drinkers may be happy to know that bottles returned in perfect condition are simply sterilised and reused which saves even more energy.) Since the BC Litter Act was enacted in 1998, it is estimated that the program has saved the blue box program $7 million. The program is in effect directing the cost of recycling liquor bottles to the users.

Recycling Facts

• Recycling plastic uses only five to 10 percent as much energy as manufacturing new plastic.
• Every tonne of crushed waste glass used saves 1.2 tonnes of raw materials and 135 litres of oil.
• Every glass bottle recycled saves enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for four hours.
• Recycling one tonne of newspaper saves: 19 trees, 3 cubic metres of landfill, 4000 kilowatt hours of energy, 29,000 litres of water and 30 kgs of air pollution.
• From 1988 to 1996, the volume of cardboard boxes, paper bags and cartons sent to landfills was cut by 60 percent.
• Every aluminum can recycled saves enough energy to power an average television for 108 minutes.
• Recycling creates six times as many jobs as other waste management options. These jobs include: haulers and sorters of material, equipment manufacturers, importers and exporters. (source: Canadian Geographic, May/June 1999)

How can you help?

• Remove labels and lids from all containers
• Separate newsprint and fine paper if your municipality requires it. Newsprint mixed in with fine paper can cost a recycler money and time.
• Do not tie newspapers into a bundle or put into a plastic bag
• In many communities, cardboard is only accepted at the community depot or specially marked bins often found in shopping mall parking lots.

The High Price of Trash
The cost of recycling can be high but consider the costs of not recycling:

If all those newspapers, glass bottles or any other recyclable items were thrown into your trash they would still have to be collected and taken to the municipal dump. Either way our taxes pay for it.

The long-term hidden costs of not recycling are even greater. Remember the photographs of the barge piled high with trash that was floated off of New York City because their landfills were full? Most landfills in our country are overflowing; the population is growing but the amount of land we have never grows.

In fact, once the trash ends up in the dump it takes years, even centuries, to break down. Because there are toxins in our trash, which can leach into ground water, we bury it leaving little room for air or moisture. (Some of the toxic items include batteries that a small number of private companies recycle as well as paint that could be recycled through Environment Canada. If you want further information on where to take your materials contact the Recycling Hotline at 1-800-667-4321) Without air and moisture, decomposition takes much longer. A piece of paper can take a month to decompose. Glass takes an average of one million years, aluminum 500 years and tin 100 years.

A significant cost of putting recyclable items in the trash is that those materials are removed from the consumer chain. Newspapers would be impossible to reclaim and it would be prohibitively expensive (not to mention messy) to retrieve glass bottles or aluminum cans.

As finite raw materials continue to be used up, the need for recycled products will grow. Your efforts to recycle can reduce pollution, employ workers in the recycling industry and become a significant investment in a cleaner future.

Return to: Environment Issues

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