A new soft plastic recycling pilot is underway in the Capital Region, targeting one of the most problematic waste streams—flexible and multilayered plastics—with scalable, circular solutions.

The local program began Aug. 1 with collection bins placed at several multi-family residential buildings.

Recycle BC is testing out the collection of soft plastics — including plastic bags and packaging — from some homes in the capital region.

The local program began Aug. 1 with collection bins placed at several multi-family residential buildings. The bins were placed next to existing recycling bins and are emptied twice a week.

West Vancouver buildings have also received the bins, and plans are in place to bring them to Maple Ridge next year — along with Recycle BC’s first curbside pickup for soft plastics, also known as flexible plastics.

Recycle BC’s Maja Rusinowska said the aim is to increase the number of people recycling soft plastics, as only about 20 percent of them are currently recycled.

“We want to increase those recovery rates,” Rusinowska said.

Until now, Recycle BC has collected soft plastics mainly through its network of 250 recycling depots. A previous pilot project in West Vancouver demonstrated that more soft plastics are recycled when collected directly from homes.

“We’re always striving for positive environmental impacts and doing what we can to recycle household packaging and paper responsibly,” said Rusinowska, whose organization manages residential packaging and paper recycling in B.C.

“We’re just working to make residents’ lives easier by slowly rolling this out,” she said. “Multi-family is the first go at this.”

Soft plastics have historically been challenging to recycle because they encompass a wide range of products, Recycle BC said. However, research with Merlin Plastics led to a breakthrough moment in 2022.

The Lower Mainland facility recycles a variety of soft plastics into pellets that have a range of applications.

“This solution combines the hard-to-recycle plastic with better-quality recycled plastic to produce a commodity that can be used in a wide variety of manufacturing applications,” Recycle BC said in a statement. “This allowed for a unified collection category for all flexible plastics, simplifying the recycling process for residents.”

The CRD has an extensive list of recyclable soft plastics on its website, including candy wrappers, chip and cereal bags, wet wipe dispenser bags, net plastic bags, and bread bags. The list can be accessed through crd.bc.ca/service/waste-recycling.

Not recyclable are plastic squeeze tubes, plastic strapping, plastic rings for beer, and PVC/vinyl.

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Soft Plastics Are Hard to Recycle — But Not with the Right Tech

Flexible plastics and films have long been a challenge for mainstream recycling—until now. This pilot represents a critical step in transitioning toward circular, scalable recovery of soft plastics.

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✅ Converting soft & mixed plastics into low-carbon fuels and feedstocks
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Talk to Klean Industries to bring soft plastic recycling to scale—because no material should be too complex to recover » GO.