Fuchsia Dragon | [email protected]
When you drop your plastics into Jasper’s recycling centre, do you wonder where they will end up?
The town has found a new “responsible” route to send our plastics along, and Ross Derksen, Operations Services manager, has seen the process first-hand.
“With what’s going on in the world, the potential for the wrong thing to be happening with plastic recycling, we were really looking for an option of what to do with it,” he said.
Previously, the department had been using brokers to shift the plastic and didn’t know where it was going.
But in June, Derksen found an operation that is transparent in its work to take over Jasper’s plastics.
And he followed a load along its journey every step of the way.
First, plastics from Jasper’s recycling trailer are squashed into bales here in town.
The bales are taken to the environmental facility seven hours away, where they are put into a grinder and the plastics are shredded into fine pieces.
A high powered magnet picks up any bits of metal from the shreds and the pieces are blown into tote bags.
The totes are then taken to a second facility where the process is repeated to make the plastic pieces even finer.
From there, the tiny shreds are put into a heating element and melted into the product that is being made that day.
Products include parking curbs, decorative walls, benches, picnic tables and planters.
Derksen said: “What’s very attractive with the process is if you find a big project, like planters, if you send a lot of plastic to the facility with a chain of custody we can make sure it comes back as what we want.”
It is an added cost to bring back the end product.
Chief Administrative Officer Mark Fercho praised Derksen for his initiative. He said: “He took it on himself to say, ‘We are not getting it into the international market of plastics that ends up who knows where,’ until he was comfortable he had a place to take our plastics and know they would be managed responsibly.”
Derksen said Jasper has 32 metric tonnes of baled plastic that “has to go somewhere”.
To send it to landfill would cost $8,960 and to recycle it this way costs $10,000.
He said in a year-and-a-half cycle, Jasper produces about 75 tonnes of plastic.
Councillor Jenna McGrath said: “The numbers I can see as a difference in 18 months is about $3,000 difference from landfill to this.
“I think it’s an amazing initiative.”
Councillor Rico Damota said Derksen’s presentation was a “good eye-opener” and Councillor Bert Journault said he was “very encouraged” by the project.
Derksen said the plastics accepted by the facility are broader, and it should be much easier to understand what is allowed.
He said: “People of Jasper over the years have been really well educated, we just need to re-message again and remind people.
“The odd person doesn’t do the right thing but generally people in Jasper are very good.”
