Some technological changes have been made to the NVSS bottle depot in Vanderhoof.
The recycling hub now accepts electronics, among other things, which is a huge step in the right direction, Ken Young said, principal at Nechako Valley Secondary School.
“As a community member it’s huge because until now our electronics were hauled away. This now helps to ensure the bottle depot is more then just bottles and will create more funding flow into the school for our sports and academic programs,” Mr. Young said.
Since mid December 2014 the bottle depot on Bute Ave has accepted televisions, laptops, printers, electronic toys, electric instruments, non-cellular phones and medical monitoring devices to name a few. The service will continue to accept all recyclable plastic and glass bottles/containers along with paint and juice boxes. A full list of items accepted can be viewed at return-it.ca/electronics.
Everything recycled at the NVSS bottle depot is shipped to Encorp, a not-for-profit stewardship corporation. Although they have accepted electronics for a few years, there was simple no room at the depot and there still isn’t, Don Sukkau said, bottle depot manager of six years.
“Encorp is now allowing us to ship the electronics in mega bags that we leave outside. This way we don’t need as much room to store them before we ship them,” Mr. Sukkau said.
(Residents are reminded not to put electronics directly in the bag but to bring them inside to the manager first so he can assert they are acceptable electronics.)
When any electronic is bought an eco fee is paid at time of purchase. Although residents will not be compensated for recycling them with the depot, NVSS will receive a reinburstment measured by weight.
“Over the years there has been a lot of different teams and individuals supported through this,” Mr. Young said. “Our costs in the north are so much higher than say in the lower main land and in order to combat that we need to be creative. We’re one of the only schools in the province to have a bottle depot.”
On a more curdled note, the NVSS bottle depot no longer accepts milk cartons. This is because the Dairy Council of British Columbia was paying Encorp to recycle milk containers but a new organization called Multi Materials BC has taken over packaged material including Styrofoam and milk containers.
“If we were to take on milk containers we would have to take on all packaging materials and we not only don’t have the room for that we don’t have a contract with Multi Materials,” Mr. Sukkau said. “The fee they pay for recycling packaged materials may be feasible in a big city where large volumes are going out but it’s not in a small town. Even if we rented a bigger place we wouldn’t get our money back.”
The transfer station in Vanderhoof does however accept milk containers in with the household plastic.