Swimming in plastic: How Metro Vancouver handles its own recycling

The yard at Bumper Now in Burnaby is something to behold: nine thousand automobile bumpers waiting to be re-manufactured for the auto body industry.

The stacks of parts represent just a fraction of the bumpers that end up at the company. It also represents the unique way recycling works in Metro Vancouver.

Until recently, most of the bumpers were a waste product. Before China banned almost all plastics from overseas markets, Bumper Now would ship hundreds of pieces a month for recycling….

B.C.’s bumper recycling business

They’re good for protecting your car, but terrible for the environment. For years, millions of plastic bumpers have been ending up in landfills, but now one BC company is changing all that. Tom Walsh has more…

Turning Garbage into Jobs

This Burnaby company is a good example of a new business arising out of necessity. Initially, the company focused only on the “reuse” part of the “reduce, reuse, recycle” equation by rehabilitating plastic car bumpers, which were then sold to auto body shops.

But only 5% of the bumpers were rehabilitated. The rest were sent to China. However, when China started slamming the door on some recycled plastics, the company suddenly had a growing stockpile of car bumpers that could have ended up in the landfill…

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