SARCAN Celebrates Milestone

The presence of Canada's multi-million dollar recycling industry was felt in Saskatchewan Wednesday after SARCAN announced it had reached the 2 billion mark in recycled beverage containers.

As Environment Minister Buckley Belanger pointed out, the milestone is a victory for the environment since more than 107 million kilograms of plastic, aluminum and glass have been eliminated from the province's waste stream in the past 14 years. Helping matters is the province's return rate (83 percent) on bottles, cans and jugs, which is one of the highest in North America, he said.

But the ever-present stacks of metal and plastic at SARCAN's Saskatoon and Regina plants also show the lucrative business of recycling is steadily growing in Saskatchewan, said Belanger. The value of the recycled materials has created an additional annual benefit of $3.8 million and the deposit refunds paid on the 2 billion containers has amounted to just under $200 million.

Excluding Manitoba and Ontario, the business of collecting empty bottles and cans in Canada is worth an estimated $100 million in economic activity, according to Clarissa Morawski, principal of CM Consulting in Toronto.

"Gone are the days of makeshift manual return counters in retail stores and no-frills depots," she said. "With deposit-return now established as a permanent container recovery mechanism in most Canadian jurisdictions, what was once viewed as a marginal business has evolved into an attractive and, in some cases, lucrative business venture."

Morawski said "the revenue is generated through handling fees, or the permanent price paid to the collector of the containers for the service of providing a collection centre for consumers, returning the deposit, sorting and preparing containers for final processing."