Alberta Bottle Depot Association (ABDA)

Alberta Beverage Container Recycling Corporation (ABCRC) - Collection System

• ABCRC
• ABCRC Website
• Recycling of Containers
• Return Rates 2000 - 2003,
• Return Rates 1998 - 1993,
• Processing Containers
• ABCRC Display at AGM 1998
  

ABCRC (Alberta Beverage Container Recycling Corporation) - Collection System

ABCRC
3617 Ogden Road S.E.
Calgary, AB T2G 4N6
T: (403) 264-0170 F: (403) 264-0179
http://www.abcrc.com

ABCRC is the corporation set up to represent the manufacturers of the beverage containers. ABCRC is the common collections system which collects the containers from the 207 bottle depots.

• Over 686,000,000 containers are processed annually.
  
• Over $12,000,000 of scrap revenue is generated by processing facilities.
  
• There are two processing plants: one in Calgary and one in Edmonton.
  
• Each building occupies 50,000 square feet.
  
• 60 people are employed.

Recycling of Containers

Aluminum Cans

Alcan Aluminum receives baled material, remelts the cans and then produces rolls of thin aluminum sheet which is sold back to manufacturers of new aluminum beverage cans.

P.E.T.E.

Image Industries grinds bales of bottles into flake which is used to produce fibres for use in carpet manufacturing, fiberfill for jackets and polyester fabrics.
PET vs PVC

Glass

Crushed glass is shipped to Vitreous Environmental Group in Airdrie. They grind it down into a fine powder which is used in the manufacturing of fiberglass insulation. Other uses include additives for reflective paints used in road marking/traffic signs and sandblasting.

Bi-Metal Cans

Bales of cans are sold to the scrap metal industry. These end up back at steel smelters and are re-formed into any number of metal products such as concrete reinforcing bars, tubing, piping steel plate, etc.

H.D.P.E. (High Density Polyethylene)

Merlin Plastics receives this commodity in bales. They chop it, wash it, and process it into pellets. At this stage it is sold as post consumer resin to be remanufactured into various plastic containers such as buckets, barrels, shampoo bottles, etc.

Did You Know?

Last year (1998) they processed:

• 686,000,000 containers
  • If you counted one per second continuously, it would take you 22 years to count them all. If you worked at full-capacity eight hours a day, it would take you 66 years to get through this load. That's one heck of a long career! That's over 250 containers for every man, woman, and child in the province. We're drinking a lot of beverages!
• 386,700,000 aluminum cans.
  • If you laid them end to end, you could go back and forth between Calgary and Edmonton 100 times!
  
  Aluminum
  
• 51,250 tons of material.
  • This equates to 342 blue whales or 118 Boeing 747s loaded with fuel.

102 Million lbs. of material was diverted from landfills last year.

**Doesn't include milk or domestic beer. Job well done it's all part of saving the planet.

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