in North America: Municipalities and
provinces with recycling programs: •
Ontario •
Prince Edward Island •
Quebec – Montreal, Quebec City, Laval •
British Columbia – Metro Vancouver Region, Victoria •
Nova Scotia – seven different regions: Cape Breton, Pictou-Antigonish-Guysborough, East Hants-Cumberland-Colchester, Halifax Regional Municipality, Annapolis-Kings, South Shore-West Hants, Yarmouth Digby •
Saskatchewan – Moose Jaw, Regina, Saskatoon, Prince Albert •
Alberta – Edmonton, Calgary, Medicine Hat, Fort McMurray, Canmore •
Manitoba – Winnipeg •
Newfoundland and Labrador – St. John's
Alberta In
Alberta, the
Alberta Recycling Management Authority (also known as "Alberta Recycling") is an
arm's-length body set up by the Government of Alberta under the Ministry of the Environment to coordinate recycling in the province. It administers the
surcharge that has been added to the price of
electronics,
paint, and
tires sold in the province since 2005 to pay for the recycling of those products in Alberta, and it helps to administer the province's household
hazardous waste disposal program. A separate management authority, the
Beverage Container Management Board (BCMB), is responsible for recycling of
beverage containers.
Beverage container recycling regulations were first introduced province-wide in 1972, but the BCMB was created in 1997 to create a provincial oversight body for the industry. The BCMB oversees two
non-profit corporations which process the materials, the Alberta Beer Container Corporation (ABCC) for standard-sized
beer bottles (which reuses rather than recycles the bottles) and the
Alberta Beverage Container Recycling Corporation (ABCRC) for all other beverage containers. Containers are collected at privately owned, for-profit
bottle depots. there are over 200 such bottle depots in Alberta, which are members of the
Alberta Bottle Depot Association. The Recycling Council of Alberta is a registered charity which has promoted recycling in Alberta since 1987. Specific industry groups lobby for their niche within the recycling sector, such as the Alberta Plastics Recycling Association.
Curbside recycling of newsprint, cardboard, plastic packaging, and other non-food household wastes is the responsibility of the individual
municipalities of Alberta. Most of Alberta's most populous municipalities have
blue box, blue bag, or blue bin
recycling container programs. The two largest municipalities, however, adopted waste-diverting policies at a very different pace.
Edmonton began a pilot project in curbside recycling for
single-family houses in 1986 and adopted it citywide in 1988, expanding over the years to include more items (
Christmas trees in 1990, and
construction waste in 2008), and higher levels of processing including large-scale composting and capturing
methane to produce energy. In addition, the scope of collection has expanded to include multi-family buildings in 2001 and businesses in 2010. It is expected that when the
waste-to-biofuel plant is completed in 2012, Edmonton will divert 90% of its waste from
landfills. By contrast
Calgary conducted a pilot project on curbside recycling in 1991 and then abandoned curbside collection for a drop-off system until a second pilot program in 2004, and currently collects recyclates only at private houses, with no plans to introduce collection at condo and apartment buildings before 2015.
Edmonton started their curbside recycling program in 1988. In 2021, Edmonton transitioned from a bag to cart system for garbage and food waste collection. On September 10, 2020, the Edmonton city council approved a 25-year waste strategy to reduce the landfill waste by 90%. The city is also transitioning into a new cart system rather from the blue bag system to dispose of waste.
Ontario As of January 1, 2026, under changing provincial regulations, municipalities in Ontario do not handle recycling, instead Circular Materials, an extended producer responsibility model is used whereby all the recycling in the province is handled uniformly by the producers of this material. Flexible plastic, toothpaste tubes, black plastic and hot beverage cups are all new materials accepted under this model. ==Recycling rate==