Burnaby, British Columbia — Reclaim Plastics, a recycling facility in BC has received provincial funding to help them divert hard to recycle automotive plastics from the landfill.
The $667,000 in funding from the CleanBC Plastics Action Fund will be used to purchase technology that will make it easier to sort hard to recycle automotive plastics like bumpers, headlights and other automotive plastics.
According to the CleanBC Plastics Action Plan, the use of plastics in manufacturing is growing rapidly, but because it is so difficult to recycle it very rarely gets reused and often ends up in landfills.
“With automotive plastics being the second highest contributor to plastic waste after packaging, our goal has always been to prevent automotive plastic waste from entering the landfill,” said Al Boflo, a partner at Reclaim Plastics.
Boflo hopes that through this initiative Reclaim Plastics will be able to help auto body shops and auto recyclers become more environmentally conscious. He also hopes that this will allow automotive plastics to be repurposed easily.
“There is enormous potential for plastic waste to be source material for new products – keeping it out of landfills and protecting our environment – another strategy in our CleanBC Plastics Action Plan,” said George Heyman, minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy.
The average vehicle volume is made up of 50 percent plastic, which is approximately 440 pounds. Before a car is recycled all of this plastic material needs to be sorted, decontaminated and processed.
Currently, Metro Vancouver has implemented a disposal ban on auto bodies and parts, but this ban has not been mandated by the rest of the province. Because of this many auto body shops and auto recyclers continue to discard their automotive plastic waste, as it is cheaper than recycling, said a news release.
With this funding Reclaim Plastics will be able to safely dispose of, and even recycle automotive plastic to create landscape edging, piping, or even new plastic car parts.
