A Recycling program in southeastern New Brunswick is making history as the first municipal facility in Canada to recycling waste polystyrene.
The Westmorland-Albert Solid Waste Corporation bought the GreenMax C200, a $35,000 compactor that gives businesses and municipalities the ability to recycle waste polystyrene (styrofoam).
“This is something we’ve been working on for over six months,” said Bill Slater, the general manager.
“Staff have been very dilligent to get this thing up and going.”
The waste corporation – which services Moncton – shipped out several loads of recycled polystyrene in the past, to be turned into crown molding.
The payback for the waste corporation’s each load is about $6,000, it may not be a lot of cash, but official say the real gain goes beyond the money.
Slater said the each container shipped before equals approx. 36 tractor trailer-sized loads of EPS that would otherwise have ended up in a landfill.
Laid out side by side, the 15-tonne shipment will save about a football field worth of landfill space.
“All the recycled polystyrene has been shipped to China to a company named Intco, who will turned it into crown molding and picture frames.
Slater said he believes there is a future opportunity for NB to recycle more than 80% waste polystyrene, and then set up local molding facility.
