New Brunswick is in the process of shifting its existing recycling programmes to encompass new recycling programs to prevent electronic components, old prescription drugs, batteries, mercury-containing devices, and oil out of landfill.
To begin with, New Brunswick’s Tire Stewardship Board, launched in 1996 to divert scrapped tires from landfill and to create recycled objects instead, has been renamed and given a new mandate.
The newly restructured programme is now called Recycle New Brunswick. With the new programme come new provincial environmental goals for the waste management board.
“We believe comprehensive, province-wide recycling will prove vitally important for New Brunswick’s environment and our economy as the future unfolds,” said Recycle New Brunswick board chairman Murray Driscoll.
As part of the programme, Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia propose to place a recycling fee on “every TV and computer sold in the province as part of the first phase of its new waste-diversion effort”.
The New Brunswick government isn’t quite at that stage yet, but New Brunswick Solid Waste Commission Association executive director Don Shea said the concept has been discussed.
“You want to keep out your picture tubes and all the chemicals that are associated with it, the mercury used in its manufacture, etcetera,” Shea said. “Those parts that can be recycled will be recycled, and those parts that can be sold will be sold. What may end up in the landfill will be a very small percentage of the original product itself.”
For more information, visit: recyclenb.com
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