The organization behind B.C.’s recycling system wants residents to do more to keep plastics from going to landfills or ending up as litter — as only 45 per cent of plastic packaging used by residents is recovered for recycling.
“There’s been a lot of hesitancy around recycling, but our model proves that you can have a system that responsibly manages and recycles these plastics,” said Sam Baker, executive director of Recycle B.C.
Baker says if residents put plastic packaging in the right place, it will stay out of landfills and ultimately get made into new products.
“If residents are going to do the work to put that material in the bin or take to the depot, we’re going to do our job to make sure that gets recycled.”
In 2024, residents either put into their blue boxes or took to depots 31,362 tonnes of plastic packaging — from Ziploc bags to yogurt containers — of which 98 per cent was recycled, according to Recycle B.C.’s latest annual report.
B.C.’s not-for-profit system, introduced 10 years ago, was the first in North America to require producers to pay for the packaging and paper they create to be recycled, lifting the burden from local governments.
Its success is measured, in part, by subtracting the net tonnes collected from the tonnes reported by producers, which is the recovery rate.
In 2024, Recycle B.C. recovered 100 per cent of glass made by producers and used by residents, and 92 per cent of paper.
The recovery of plastics, however, falls far short of that — combined, less than half of the rigid and flexible plastics residents use end up being diverted and recycled, meaning the rest go in the garbage.
The recovery of plastic bags and wrapping trails far behind the recovery of things like plastic containers.
Baker said there are several reasons for this, ranging from a lack of understanding of how B.C.’s system works and possible distrust in it, to confusion over how to sort items and ultimately the need to take some items to special depots.
“There’s those that do have that apathy and don’t know what happens — or are misinformed about what happens — to their material once it goes into the blue bin,” said Baker. “And those are the stories, dynamics we’re trying to change.”
Recycle B.C.’s goal is to raise the recovery rate of all plastics to at least 50 per cent. One way to make gains will be to improve the recovery of flexible plastics, such as bags and wrappers.
Currently most residents need to collect and keep those items and then take them to one of 227 depots spread across the province or one of 53 London Drugs locations, which has recycling kiosks for items not accepted in curbside or multi-unit building pickup.
“London Drugs recognizes that we put a lot of material out into the market,” said Raman Johal, sustainability manager at the retail chain. “So we only feel right that we are responsible for taking some of that material back.”
But the corporate responsibility only works if residents are willing to make the effort to bring in the materials.
Recycle B.C. has a plan to overcome that barrier. In January it launched a pink box, to be used in communities alongside residents’ blue boxes.
Currently, only West Vancouver and Maple Ridge are offering the service, with at least two more large municipalities coming online next year, according to Baker.
Aubrey Smethurst, a West Vancouver resident who works in marketing, describes the pink box as a “game changer.”
The mother of two says she has long cared about recycling and would go out of her way to make sure things like the plastic bags her family used got to depots.
Now she diverts them to her pink box, which gets picked up once a month from her home.
“One of the things that it’s really shown me is how much plastics we actually use in our day-to-day life,” she said.
Smethurst said seeing the flexible plastics pile up in her pink box has changed her buying habits, meaning she seeks out items with less plastic packaging and finds ways to reuse some of it.
