Province aims to be leader in electronics recycling
It's not every day you find out you're responsible for a provincial pilot program.
But that's what happened to me this week when Environment Minister Jason Nixon told me a conversation I had with him less than one month after the 2019 provincial election is what got Alberta's Expanded Electronics Pilot Program (epilot) going.
“I'd been minister for three or four days — I remember I could barely find my office — and I got a call from you and you said, `I just watched a documentary that shows there's a problem with mercury and other toxic substances winding up in the world's water because of improperly disposed of electronics.'
“You pointed out how poor people in developing countries were getting poisoned by North American electronics being recycled in unsafe working conditions overseas, and you said we don't have a proper electronic recycling program in Alberta and we need one,” said Nixon.
“And so, my first MDM (minister and deputy minister meeting) I brought this up, and then I called you back and said, `Yeah, I think that's worth looking at. I've instructed the department to get going on it,' and you wrote a column about it.”
Blame it on too much ingested mercury or something, but I have only the vaguest recollection of the conversation.
Between September 2020 and March 2021, 1,286 tonnes of e-waste has been collected. Most of the items entering the pilot program were manufactured between 2000 and 2009, says Nixon, or about 10 to 20 years after they were first purchased.
The Alberta Recycling Management Authority (ARMA), an arms-length agency that acts on behalf of the province to oversee all aspects of end-of-life processing of electronics, paint, tires and used oil materials, will also start accepting solar panels to study the viability of recycling the materials in Alberta, which will position the province “to lead in the development of a solar panel recycling standard.”
According to an ARMA report, with the average life span of a residential solar panel being 10 to 15 years, “it's clear that there will be a need to develop a recycling solution for the end-of-life management of solar panels in the very near future to avoid landfilling this material.”
The pilot program has also increased by about 500 the number of items that can be recycled, including power tools, toys, AV equipment, small appliances, telecom devices, microwave ovens, lighting fixtures, electric lawn mowers, leaf blowers, edgers, trimmers and the like.
“We all have that drawer full of old cellphones in our house, but as a province there were numerous sea cans and warehouses full of these type of products that we had no ability to deal with,” said Nixon.
“We were just piling this stuff up but now it's all getting broken into its component parts — glass, plastics, metal, mercury, rareearth minerals — and being recycled and reused.”
It's expected that a whopping 24,600 tonnes of this e-waste will be recycled annually through the $43-million, two-year pilot project, which is expected to become a permanent program after all the bugs are worked out.
“The biggest thing in the end is that by removing more of these products from our landfill sites, we prevent mercury and other toxic items from seeping into our water, which has significant negative consequences for the environment and for animals and humans. And our landfill sites are already getting too full, so there's also a significant positive financial impact of diverting that waste,” said Nixon.
The pilot program has also already created 400 new fulltime jobs for a total of 760 fulltime jobs in the sector, which doesn't include all of the other recycling programs running in the province.
ARMA is also working with a national organization (Recycle My Cell) to assess old phones to determine if they can be reused by those in need and not just broken
down, though of the 9,220 units being assessed, less than one per cent have been determined to be suitable for reuse.
Nixon says way back when Ralph Klein was Alberta's environment minister (1989-92), the province led the country with mandatory bottle recycling and other recycling programs. Since then, the province has lagged behind many jurisdictions and is now ranked seventh in the country.
“We used to lead the way but no more, and that's unfortunate. And when you're storing old electronics in sea containers and warehouses, I don't think Albertans can speak with pride about it, but I do believe that over the next two years we will be speaking with pride about it again,” said Nixon.
“And it was all your idea,” he added.
I'll admit, it kind of feels good knowing that, but Nixon's the one who acted on the idea.
If you have electronic items you'd like to have recycled, you can find the nearest of 37 provincial depots by visiting albertarecycling.ca or by calling 311 in Calgary or Edmonton.