Content from Globe Content Studio
Article provided by Canadian Beverage Container Recycling Association
4-minute read
It’s noon in Manitoba on an average Wednesday and your employees just finished their lunch in the cafeteria of the company you work at. They pack away their thermoses, wipe away the crumbs from their sandwich and toss their empty can of soda – or maybe it’s a box of juice or a glass bottle of iced tea – in the blue bin marked “Recycle Everywhere” as they head back to work.
It’s automatic muscle memory now, but 15 years ago, being able to recycle a beverage container anywhere in Manitoba – let alone at work – was anything but effortless. If you’d been really eco-conscious, maybe you would have taken a glass bottle home to put it in your own blue box. Most of us, when we’re out and about, though? We’d probably just toss our cans, cartons or bottles into the regular trash because it was easier and quicker.
And that’s exactly why the Canadian Beverage Container Recycling Association (CBCRA), a not-for-profit, industry-funded organization, was formed back in 2010. They offer consumers a cost-effective and convenient way to recycle empty beverage containers – at home, at work and in public spaces.
“When we started, the recycling rate for beverage containers in Manitoba was 42 percent,” says Ken Friesen, the executive director of the CBCRA. “The idea was to create a system that was as convenient for consumers as the blue-box system and as effective as the deposit system and do that for a reasonable cost.”
Fast-forward a decade and a half, and CBCRA has helped increase that recycling rate to hit over 70 per cent consistently; some container types are as high as 80 per cent.
“We’re amongst the best in the country in terms of plastic bottle recycling and we’ve been able to do that while achieving the lowest cost program in Canada,” says Friesen. “From day one, it’s been a two-pronged approach. People need to have bins within a reasonable distance or they won’t recycle… and people need to know what to recycle, why it’s important to recycle and what these materials become in their next life. When they know all that, people want to recycle.”
One of the ways they’ve been able to do this has been by equipping workplaces with the resources they need to make recycling beverage containers as effortless as possible. They provide free recycling bins and clear, helpful signage with pictograms so there’s no guesswork about, “Is this iced-coffee can okay to recycle? What about this kombucha bottle?” (Yes and yes, by the way.) They also provide free hands-on consulting to businesses.
“We’ll have someone come in and help you,” says Friesen to Manitoba businesses who’d like to take advantage of these free resources to boost their beverage container recycling. “We don’t just send you an e-mail with a list of instructions with what to do.”
It’s clear the program has caught on. In 2023, the CBCRA reached 80,000 public space “Recycle Everywhere” bins, meaning there is one for every 17 Manitobans. Friesen says making it easy to recycle beverage containers can also lead to a “halo effect” where individuals and businesses start adding other things, like paper and other food packaging to their recycling efforts, which, of course, is not only good for the environment, but helps increase employee satisfaction, which in turn can assist retention and foster better engagement on other business projects.
Winpak, a Manitoba packaging company, is always looking for ways to make the products they produce more sustainable. They’re doing this in a host of ways: reducing waste in each of their 13 plants in North America, investing in Circular Economy partnerships, and a $100-million expansion of their Winnipeg facility that will make zero-waste production achievable with the new extrusion line purposefully built for barrier mono-material recycle ready flexible film.
They’ve also incorporated those CBCRA-provided bins into their own broader corporate recycling strategy. And while the number of materials they use in production is more significant than any waste their employees might produce individually, keeping every last thing possible from landfill is a priority across the Winpak ecosystem, including an entire department dedicated to recycling and finding the best afterlife for materials.
“Today, recycling is the one area where a difference can be made and our program is a great example of that,” says Ron Asmundson, Winpak Division’s director of technical services. “Most drink containers are actually collected, sorted, and processed for recycling. The same can’t be said for all packaging and material types so it’s a good example of where the industry needs to go.”
