Langley City's Blue+2 plastic and foam recycling pilot project has now reached the halfway mark.
And so far, residents of the 800 homes selected to take part in the test are doing a good job, said Craig Foster, who is project manager for the Canadian Plastics Industry Association, and a Langley resident. In fact, so far, he said, only two major concerns have arisen.
The first is that foam food containers aren't always being properly cleaned before they're placed inside the bags where they are not only unusable, but can contaminate other materials. The second, he said, is that homeowners don't seem to be clear on exactly which types of plastics to include.
"People, for some reason, just aren't paying attention or they're not thinking," said Foster of the tendency to throw unwashed containers into the blue bags.
“While we’re very happy that there’s a lot of the right materials there, we’re also finding too much of the wrong materials."
In addition to leftover food, they're finding supermarket plastic food wrap used on meat, poultry, fish and cheese, ziplock-type bags, frozen food bags and kitchen plastic food wrap.
The problem might have something to do with societal attitudes about recycling, he said.
"There has to be a shift in the way people look at how we handle these materials," said Foster. "Most people think of recycling as part of the disposal system — a way to get rid of stuff."
But if it's contaminated with food, it's not going to get recycled, Foster said.
"It's just some very expensive trash. That's a shame, but I think that's part of the learning curve."
The other problem is a bit trickier, he acknowledged, in that participants don't seem to know which types of plastic wraps are meant to be included in the study.
"There are enough types to be confusing," he admitted. "It's not a slam dunk for people to tell the difference."
"If it crinkles or crunches and is smaller than a piece of paper, then it is definitely not part of this study," said Foster
Examples of these crinkly plastics are cellophane-type bags for nuts; clear wrap for boxes of tea and cookies; chip and snack bags; granola bar wrappers; and pasta bags.
“If we can keep those food wraps and crinkly sounding plastics and out of the blue recycling bags in the second half of the test, we’ll be able to report that the project has been a huge success,” Foster said.
A new door hanger is being distributed to the test homes which goes into greater detail about which materials are not acceptable and Foster is hopeful it will help clear up any confusion.
In terms of polystyrene (Styrofoam), the quality of the materials being collected by Emterra Environmental so far has been top-notch, said Foster.
Last January, it was announced that the City would be home to a pilot project which will help determine a course of action for the entire province when it comes to the difficult task of recycling foams and select plastics in a cost-effective way. Once they've been compiled, the results will be used to plan a recycling program in B.C. — something that will be mandatory by May, 2014.
Foster won't have a clear picture of how many of the 800 test homes actively took part until the study ends on April 27.
"The first week we looked and said, 'Gee, that's not very many,'" Foster said.
But homeowners had been instructed to fill each bag before they set it out and for some households it could take several weeks to fill one bag, Foster noted.
Six weeks in, he said, at least half of the households have participated at least once.
"I'm looking forward to week 11 — I think there's going to be a surge," he said.
"We're happy with the way things are going. We'd be ecstatic if people could just clean it up," he said.
If Blue+2 householders have questions, they can call Emterra customer service at 604-599-8151, ext. 123. Information about the test project including recycling guides is available on the Emterra Environmental website at www.emterra.ca/blue2.