New Brunswick hopes to expand glass recycling program

Recycling glass in New Brunswick wasn’t always possible.

Up until 2020, glass jars and containers ended up in a landfill. It’s something Oromocto-Lincoln MLA Mary Wilson heard a lot about when she started door-knocking during her bid for office in 2018.

“People were asking me about why they couldn’t recycle glass,” she said in an interview on Saturday. “Among other things, they were concerned about glass.”

New Brunswick was one of the few provinces unable to offer glass recycling, despite the existence of Rayan Environment Solutions in Moncton, which serves all of Atlantic Canada.

Wilson said she connected with then-minister Jeff Carr about how they could get the ball rolling on a recycling program.

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“As it turned out Rayan Environmental (Solutions) in Moncton … reached out to the Town of Oromocto because they received a lot of calls from residents here wanting to know how they could recycle their glass,” Wilson said.

The province and 31 private recycling facilities began the collecting process three years ago, and the province is hoping to increase that to all 70 redemption centres in the province.

One of the first locations to sign on was Tri-R Redemption in Oromocto.

David McCarthy, the technical manager at Resource Recovery for the facilities in the region, said once the beverage bottle program came into effect, redemption centres were overwhelmed and glass jars and containers fell to the way-side.

Since its inception, the program has been able to divert 101 tonnes of glass from the landfill, according to the government.

“It is a lot of glass, I’ve seen what comes through and we’re only doing it at 31 locations now and I can just imagine what is still out there but it’s diverting a lot out of the landfill for sure,” McCarthy said in an interview on Saturday.

McCarthy said the most important thing to remember is the requirements for dropping off glass. The lid must be removed and the inside must be cleaned thoroughly of liquid and food. Labels can stay on.

Anything that comes in and doesn’t adhere to those rules just ends up being thrown away. Once glass has been collected, it is then sent to RES to be crushed.

“And then you know, reused again, like fibreglass, stuff like that. It’s usually never reused for glass jars again, it’s used for another product,” McCarthy said.

The Department of Environment and Climate Change said it is working on a solid waste plan to add the remaining 39 locations, but couldn’t provide a timeline on when it would happen.

Deputy Minister Heidi Liston told a legislative committee it can be hard to bring recycling depots on board because the centers receive no compensation for recycling glass.

“We expect that we’re going to maintain access around the province,” Liston said on Tuesday.