Results-based regulation: B.C.’s framework is supercharging recycling

Sustainable living is important to Canadians, and British Columbia is demonstrating what happens when that passion meets a good performance-based regulatory framework and is taken even further by producer responsibility organizations (PROs) working hard not just to meet regulation but go above and beyond these guidelines.

While the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy set British Columbia’s Recycling Regulation, industry delivers on the results-based framework, leaving industry the power to determine how it will fulfil the regulation to meet and, in many cases, exceed the requirements. And this framework is exactly why the B.C. extended producer responsibility (EPR) model takes a leading role.

For an idea of how this EPR model works and the successes that such programs generate, let’s narrow our focus on a commodity all Canadians are familiar with: beverage containers.

Under B.C.’s Recycling Regulation, producers that sell beverages are obligated to be responsible for the material they put into the marketplace. They must meet specific recovery targets for those products and, rather than relying on taxpayers or municipalities to fund the system, this is a user-pay system where the consumer who purchases the product pays for the recycling of that product within the price of the product. However, instead of individual brands setting up a bunch of different programs and processes to recover their specific products in B.C., an organization such as Encorp Pacific (Canada), better known as Return-It, steps in to do that work on behalf of the producers, ensuring that the system is convenient, efficient and effective.

Return-It is a not-for-profit producer-responsibility organization, or PRO, dedicated to fostering a world where nothing is waste. Its mandate, which it aims to fulfil as environmentally and economically as possible, is to develop, manage and improve systems to recover used packaging (beverage containers) and end-of-life products from consumers and ensure they are properly recycled.

Unfortunately, myths abound that recycling beverage containers merely results in them being landfilled or incinerated; however, B.C.’s regulation, schedule 1, specific to beverage containers, provides a firm protection against this. This means that all beverage containers collected in B.C. get recycled, not landfilled or incinerated. Many material types such as plastic, aluminum and glass are processed locally in Canada or the United States and are turned back into new beverage containers. Some material is shipped overseas for recycling as no end market uses exist locally.

For sustainability-minded stewardship organizations such as Return-It, keeping containers out of landfills and preventing incineration were already staple practices before EPR regulations were set in place, which proves how much B.C.’s results-based regulation allows for innovative and creative solutions to meet recycling targets and aligns with Canada’s – and the world’s – sustainability goals.

B.C.’s regulatory framework has led to a great deal of EPR successes, including reasonable and free consumer access to collection facilities. In total, B.C.’s used beverage container deposit return system contributed to the reduction of about 125,200 tonnes of CO2e from being released into the atmosphere in 2023, a bigger reduction than in 2022. Return-It achieved an actual recovery rate of 79.6 per cent, a three per cent increase over 2022.

Guided by its founding principles, Return-It develops and operates a system that provides consumer-friendly and convenient return points throughout the province. It manages the system in a cost-effective manner that has the lowest possible impact on consumer prices and finds usable end products that maximize the value of the recovered materials. Return-It is a model example of extended producer responsibility.