BREADS THE card in

the recycled paper gift

Friday, November 22, 1991 ~- North Shore News -— 49

Recyclers push for separated plastics program

shop:

*‘Nothing lasts forever... except styrofoam and the way I

feel about you.”

‘*Plastiphobia’’ has become
4 Mainstream popular culture, and
the plastics industry has been
working overtime to improve its
image — and, to a certain extent,
its product.

Over the past few years, how-
ever, their PR efforts seem to
have been limited largely to an
edgy defensiveness, sprinkled with
s inflammatory statistics that served
only to further raise the ire of en-
vironmentalists.

Recently, though, I’ve seen
signs that both sides are more
willing to find a realistic common
ground. Environmentalists con-
# cede that there are justifiable uses
for plastics: industry folk ac-
knowledge that plastics disposal
8 does indeed pose a challenge that
m must be dealt with.

Various factions gathered last
# week at a plastics recycling forum

sponsored by EPIC 3.C. (the
B.C. branch of the Environment
and Plastics Institute of Canada),
which is chaired by West Van-
conuverite Jim Cairns of Dow
Chemical.

I was pleased that the day-long
forum was not simply a sales pitch
for the product, but a good effort
at honest communication between
stakeholders in the environment,
recycling and plastics fields.

There was nary a Tetra-Pak in
sight — coffee was served in reus-
able mugs — and, in fact, EPIC
presented little support for the
Tetra-Pak mode of recycling,
which attempts to turn mixed
plastic waste, including Tetra-
Paks, into plastic lumber called
“‘Superwood.”

The problem with this recycling
operation is that it takes a large
quantity of high-grade, readily
recyclable plastics such as milk
jugs and pop bottles, and brings
them down to the fowest common
denominator by mixing them with
other plastic waste to produce a

Peggy
Trendel-Whittaker

ECOINFO

product that may or may not be
very marketable.

Unlike Superwood, which had
positioned itself as an easy solu-
tion to the plastics problem, the
EPIC conference didn’t promise
magical recycling schemes.

Emphasis was placed on the
fact that the industry must have
clean, separated plastics to work
with for recycling operations to be
viable.

In partnership with Dow Chem-
ical, Surrey’s Merlin Plastics,
which currently buys the North
Shore’s milk jugs and pop bottles
from blue box collector IPI, is
gearing up to accept a_ wider
variety of plastics.

The pellets that are produced
once the waste plastic has been
washed and ground at Merlin
Plastics will be sold to North
American plastic manufacturers,
who will use it in non-food ap-
plications, such as oil jugs, sham-
poo bottles, nursery pots, and so
on.

The plant will be able to accept
even polystyrene —- as long as it is
in great enough quantity, and as

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long as it is not contaminated.

“Quality is the key thing. If the
quality is no good, there is
nothing we can do,’* emphasized
Merlin’s Tony Moucachen.

That sounds simple enough, but
anyone who has worked in the
field will attest to the problems
involved in striving for ‘‘clean’’
feedstock with which to fuel
recycling operations.

Nick Thorntoa of PCL Packag-
ing, a Delta producer of grocery
and garbage bags, described some
of the contents of the recycling
bins put into grocery stores for
plastic bag recycling.

In bins he has found bags in
quantity — mixed with meat
(rays, newspapers and even
disposable diarers.

While many, and probably
most, people are great recyclers,
there are some funny attitudes out
there that are hard to deal with.

[ cecently got into a rather
heated discussion with a man who
called to complain that IPI had
not picked up his plastic ketchup
bottle from his blue box.

i explained that IPI is only in
the business of coilecting and

.

44 Quality is the key thing. If
the quality is no good, there is
nothing we can do.99

— Tony Moucachen, Merlin Plastics

marketing the miik and pop bot-
des, and that other plastics are no
good to them.

But that wasn't his problem, he
insisted. If he is being so good as
to put his blue box out, IPI
should take all its contents,
regardless.

Even if they are, in fact, gar-
bage?

Yes, he said. Once he put the
stuff into his blue box under the
sink,‘‘/t was no longer his respon-
sibility.”

There was little | could say to
convince him that such an attitude
was hardly conducive to the suc-

Watch one of your crew fall 14 stories, and you'll probably want to
throw up. Multiply that by the 1,065 accidents in BC. that killed or

maimed construction workers last year, and you'll get an idea of the
effect they had on those left behind. At the Workers’ Compensation
Board, we want to change that. But we need your help. Call us, write
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and materials. Together, we can make your site a safer workplace.

PLEASE SEND ME THESE FREE BROCHURES:

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cess of the program. Unfortu-
nately, it only takes a small per-
centage of people who aren’t will-
ing to separate garbage from
recyclables to ruin the work of the
rest of you who are.

So our muncipality’s challenge,
like other communities, is to de-
velop a collection or drop-off
program that is user-friendly, but
results in a clean, separated pro-
duct that is marketable.

And the public — which has ef-
fectively pushed for such pro-
grams — will te challenged to do
their part to make them viable.

WORKERS
COMPENSATION
BOARD fiitnat

Safety. Let's Work On It.

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