To Crush or not to Crush

It's almost time for me to do a recycling depot run. I've got 4 huge bags of assorted cans and bottles ready to go to the depot for a deposit refund. I don't really relish the trip. You see... while some recycling depots have strolled into the 21st century... ours has not. In some depots, you just drive up, hand over your unsorted bags of beverage containers tagged with bar code labels from your online account and... that's it. After they have sorted and counted your offering, the funds accrue in your online account and can then request an e-transfer (min $10) or a cheque (min $50). Sounds super simple and civilized. But our depot isn't there yet... although it has rolled out in some nearby communities as a pilot program. I am waiting patiently...

I've also heard that our provincial ReturnIt system will be introducing reverse-vending machines in some locations which would be awesome! Can you imagine if they were more common... just bring your cans or bottles, pop them into a machine and have it spit out money.

I did a bit of digging and there's one ReturnIt recycling centre in Burnaby which has had a Tomra reverse-vending machine since... 2017 (see pic at right)!! Sigh... be still my beating heart! But we're not there yet either... Our local depot's process is still rather antiquated... here's how it goes...

Drive to the depot and park in the parking lot. Go and get some rolling carts, load them up with cardboard flats (from beer cans or pop cans) and take them back to the truck. Open the back hatch, which conveniently acts as a rain shelter, and dump a bunch of cans and bottles onto one of the rolling carts.

Before Covid, one would load up the carts with all the bags of cans/bottles, take them into the slightly heated depot building and sort on tables but... not during Covid.

Then, strategically arrange the other rolling cart(s) with a series of cardboard flats and begin sorting... beer cans in one flat, pop cans in another, brown beer bottles here... green cider bottles here... clear beer bottles here (than you Corona beer, why do you have to be different?)... wine bottles here... small pop and water bottles here... bigger pop bottles here... tetra packs here. Yes. I need a LOT of cardboard flats... and sometimes two or three rolling carts. Fill up a flat, put it on the bottom of the rolling cart and then start another one.

There are some items though which are sorting resistant... crushed cans and squished plastic bottles. How does one arrange these in nice tidy ranks in the cardboard trays? It's virtually impossible... although I try... I've noticed lately, on my forest strolls to various "hang-out" spots, that a lot of people seem to think it's a good idea to crush their beer cans... either crush them into little biscuits with their feet or just squish them with their hands. While I gather this might be fun as a display of strength... it's an annoyance for the sorting process! And let's not even mention the plastic bottles that get dirty because someone's tossed them out their car window and they've sat in the ditch for weeks. Apparently these are not well-suited for recycling into new food-grade plastics and will get down-cycled into something like plastic chairs.

On top of that... if crushed beer and pop cans end up in a one-stream recycling bin (a bin that has everything including paper, plastic and cans)... they can contaminate the system. A super-flat beer can (that's been driven over) can be sorted as paper... not a good thing. And crushed cans can also fall through the rollers of the conveyor system and gum up the works...

Sooo... for the sake of the environment... the recycling system... and the sorters who bring the cans to the bottle depot... please don't crush your beverage containers! And... I'm not sure what a reverse-vending machine would make of a crushed can either...

Neatly sorted...

All of this sorting of cans and bottles naturally takes time... but finally... I'm done and I very carefully and gingerly pull my rolling carts through the parking lot, over the threshold of the door (bump!) and into the big sorting room.

Thanks to Covid... no one really sorts in here anymore... those days are probably gone forever if the new systems get introduced everywhere.

I then join the line-up of other customers and make sure that all of the beer bottles haven't gone all higgle-dee piggle-dee thanks to the bumping they've endured from the car to this point. And let's not even talk about the smaller plastic bottles which aren't as stable as the heavier glass bottles. It's hopeless to try and keep them marching in ranks of 4 x 6.

But... it all pays off when the attendant scans my cart and very quickly tallies how much I've got of each variety. And... $50 is nothing to sneeze at! I have to say, I am looking forward to the future when the new ReturnIt Express & Go system takes off everywhere... or the reverse-vending machines. Our deposit-return system might not be perfect but it's a darn sight better than jurisdictions which have no system at all.