Interchange Recycling launched its new collection site for recycling hazardous materials at the Whitehorse waste management facility on Aug. 1. Launches are also scheduled for sites in Teslin, Faro, and Watson Lake <\/p>\n
A sea can at the Whitehorse municipal waste management facility is the latest instalment of the Yukon government\u2019s extended producer responsibility program.<\/p>\n
The sea can, operated by KBL Environmental on behalf of Interchange Recycling, is where Whitehorse residents can bring their motor oil, automotive containers, oil filters, diesel exhaust fluid, and antifreeze for recycling. The large white bins sitting inside had signs advising what materials can be collected within.<\/p>\n
The site will accept these items on Mondays, Thursdays and the first Saturday of every month from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., according to a release from the City of Whitehorse. The city\u2019s waste management facility will no longer accept these items but will continue to accept other forms of household hazardous waste for the time being.<\/p>\n
Jenn Robson is the director of operations for Interchange Recycling. Standing outside that sea can on the rainy morning of Aug. 1, she told reporters that site operators will take materials like used oil or antifreeze from residents dropping them off. The site operators will ensure that the material is put into the right container, she said.<\/p>\n
Once those containers are full, she said, the material is bulked and prepared for shipment to one of the several certified processors in Alberta that KBL and Interchange Recycling are working with.<\/p>\n
With these processors, Robson said used motor oil is refined, glycol has additives re-added and is sold as antifreeze, metal in filters and containers are repurposed as rebar, nails, and wire. Plastic containers are pelletized and sold for reuse, she said.<\/p>\n
Cleaner materials have a better chance of being refined and resold, Robson said, hence the importance of not mixing materials.<\/p>\n
However, she said contaminated materials could also be processed so that clean oil could be re-refined, and \u201cslightly less clean oil\u201d can serve a purpose as waste-to-energy, such as fuel for cement kilns and similar applications.<\/p>\n
Under the new extended producer responsibility program, producers of materials which need to be recycled are responsible to operate a stewardship program to collect and recover the material they produce.<\/p>\n
These producers can fulfill that responsibility through producer responsibility organization, who will operate that collection and recovery program on their behalf. Interchange Recycling is one such producer responsibility organization.<\/p>\n
Producer responsibility organizations have started launching their collection and recovery programs in the territory this year, beginning with Call2Recycle\u2019s battery recycling program. That program began on July 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n The overall EPR program is meant to shift the responsibility for recycling from taxpayers to the people who produce the materials that need to be recycled, per a press release from YG when the EPR regulation was approved in January 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, the Yukon Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) have criticized the program. In May, the two groups sent letters to then-premier Ranj Pillai and Environment Minister Nils Clarke, saying the program was overly complex and harmful to businesses.<\/p>\n In the letters, shared to the News in June, the chamber and CFIB asked for the implementation of the program to be delayed.<\/p>\n Environment minister Nils Clarke was present at the launch of the site at the Whitehorse waste management facility. He said that there\u2019s been a great deal of work done in terms of outreach by the department of the environment and department of community services.<\/p>\n