B.C. plastic recycling fund aims to encourage businesses

The B.C. government is expanding its plastics recycling fund.

Environment Minister George Heyman says the province is offering incentives to businesses to create innovations and products to reduce plastic pollution.

“Application are now open for companies to fund creative ways to reduce, reuse, or recycle plastics right here in British Columbia. We’ve doubled the funding available for this call for proposals from last year from $5 million to $10 million,” he said.

He says the province provided funding last year to businesses for nine plastic reduction projects, which included turning old car batteries into new ones and using artificial intelligence to sort plastics at recycling facilities.

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Heyman adds many B.C. companies are already looking to expand plastics-related recycling opportunities that include electric vehicle batteries, mattresses, and medical equipment

“What that money will do is it will help applicants with kinds of proposals to reuse or upcycle plastics, to recycle plastics, to introduce new technologies to better process and more efficiently recover plastics, and, most importantly, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep plastics out of our environment.”

Clark Chow, president of B.C.-based Plascon Plastics, says government funding helped the company create the first child-safe cannabis container made from 100 per cent recycled plastic.

“These containers demonstrate how products made from post-consumer recycled plastics are comparable to those made from virgin plastics,” Chow said. “If you factor in the benefits to the economy and the environment, using waste-stream materials outperforms the use of new plastic.”

The projects to be selected for the funding will be based on their ability to reduce the use of new plastic or increase the use of post-consumer recycled plastic.