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Online shopping means more boxes to recycle come Boxing Day

Boxing Day is a term coined long before the e-commerce revolution. But come Dec. 26, recycling bins across Vancouver will indeed be overflowing with boxes — many, many boxes.

Boxing Day is a term coined long before the e-commerce revolution.

But come Dec. 26, recycling bins across Vancouver will indeed be overflowing with boxes — many, many boxes.

Every time we order something online, it has to be packaged and mailed to us. Statistics Canada says that in the 12 months ending September 2017, Canadians ordered almost $15 billion worth of goods online. That’s a lot of boxes to be flattened and recycled.

RecycleBC has seen a five per cent growth in the weight of the corrugated cardboard and box board it processes every year for the past few years. Last year, those numbers weighed in at 36,000 tonnes, or about 25 per cent of the total.

“It’s pretty significant,” says Allen Langdon, the managing of Recycle BC, a non-profit organization responsible for residential packaging and printed paper recycling throughout British Columbia.

Cardboard is one of the most easily recyclable materials, he says. Our used cardboard gets shipped to China, which transforms recycled boxes into more boxes and other fibre products.

 

boxes
RecycleBC has seen a five per cent growth in the weight of the corrugated cardboard and box board it processes every year for the past few years

 

China has recently tightened the rules on what it will accept. B.C. hasn’t had much of a problem ensuring its recyclables are clean enough to ship to China, but it’s been more of a struggle for places such as Oregon and Alberta, Allen says.

Recycle BC’s net costs are $80 million a year. Those costs are borne by the organization’s 1,200 members — the companies responsible for creating those recycling needs. Many retailers are members, including Amazon, which joined two years ago. (Newspapers, such as the Courier, have a separate stewardship plan with the province.)

“The more a producer puts into a marketplace, the more they pay,” Allen says.

Each member makes an annual report of their sales. Companies such as Nordstrom and Mountain Equipment Co-op, which also have bricks-and-mortar locations, report both store and online packaging numbers.

While boxes are easily recycled, other Christmas packaging is not welcome in the recycling bin.

Do not recycle:

  • foil wrapping paper
  • bows and ribbons
  • padded envelopes and
  • Christmas tree lights.

For more details of what you can recycle, go to RecycleBC.ca.

mperkins@vancourier.com