WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2001

Company wants to buy plastics city won't take.
City willing to talk about taking more in Blue Boxes.

By Bud Robertson

A Winnipeg company says it's willing to buy most of the recyclable plastic that the city's recycling program currently refuses to take.

And while the city isn't ready to sign on the dotted line, it will be talking to that company and others about expanding the number of items that can go into Blue Boxes.

"We can consume, probably, double or triple what the city could supply us with if they were collecting all of the plastics from everybody in the single-family curbside program," said James Zonneveld, vice-president of XPotential Products Inc., which manufactures plastic posts and curbs from recycled plastics and non-metal auto parts (such as seat cushions and carpeting).
The city's curbside recycling program currently doesn't accept some No.2 plastics, such as ice cream pails, or No.3 to No.7 plastics, which include such things as yogurt containers, shampoo bottles and plastic ketchup bottles.

Zonneveld, who helped found the former Red Box Recycling company, said his company would gladly pay for those materials.
But Dan McInnes, manager of the city's solid waste department and the point man for the recycling program, said it's not that simple.

"There's a number of things that have to happen first," he said, including changes to the Manitoba Product Stewardship Corp.'s funding to municipal recycling programs based on the amount of recyclables they collect. It doesn't fund No.3 to No.7 plastics. In Winnipeg's case, that amounts to a loss of $128 a tonne.

Still, said McInnes: "We will be talking with XPotential and others abut the possibility of adding (No.) 3 to 7 plastics to our Blue Box program. He added: "We always want to deal with the local markets."

Michael Fernandes, municipal programs manager with the product stewardship corporation, said it is considering the city's request to add more plastics to the list.

But he said there are a number of issues that have to be explored, including the consistency of the market. Up until now, the market for those plastics has been spotty and the cost to export them expensive.

XPotential has been operating a plant in Regina since 1994. It opened a plant in Winnipeg last August, quadrupling production.

Sales to its customers throughout North America have tripled in the last year and Zonneveld said he expects that trend will continue.

That, he said, will necessitate even more raw materials, including No.2 plastics other than pop bottles, as well as No.4, 5 and 7 plastics. It doesn't accept No.3 or 6 plastics, which include PVC plastic and polystyrene meat trays.

The plant currently consumes about 20,000 kilograms of plastic a day from local suppliers as well as from Saskatchewan and Alberta.

XPotential pays $66.12 a tonne for clean rigid plastic containers and $22.04 per tonne for clean film plastics, such a grocery bags.

Zonneveld estimates a total of 815 tonnes of No.2 to 7 plastics were generated by the city recycling program in 1999 and if it collected all plastic bottles that amount could be quadrupled, at a minimum.

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