Yellowknife Residential Recycling Program
The City’s Residential Recycling Program uses a drop-off station system, where residents can bring their recyclable items to blue bins in key locations across town.
The main goal is to divert as much of this material from being buried in the City’s engineered landfill. The airspace in the engineered landfill is the Solid Waste Facility’s most valuable physical asset and extending its use through material diversion is beneficial on many fronts.
In recent years, municipalities across Canada have been struggling with wavering recycling markets. As such, the Solid Waste Facility (SWF) continually re-assesses how best to manage the different streams of material that come to site.
When appropriate, recyclable material is either baled, shredded for use in the City’s Compost Program, shipped to a specialized recycler or buried in the Construction and Demolition landfill.
Contamination levels, limited capacity and on-site reuse opportunities are some of the factors that contribute to how sorted recyclables are managed.
Properly Sorting Recyclables is Crucial!
Despite recycling changes at the local and global level, the City encourages blue-bin users to properly sort their recyclable material. Compact your boxes, clean food waste out of your plastics containers and make an effort to place items in their designated bin.
Please use the Click and Fix YK reporting system to report blue bin maintenance needs such as illegal dumping and overflowing bins. This will help the SWF team address issues according to priority.
Accepted Items
Paper products:
- Cardboard (corrugated - with wavy lines between layers)
- Mixed Paper
- Boxboard (cereal boxes)
- Colour, glossy, or brown paper
- Magazines and flyers
- White or loose leaf paper
- Newspaper
Glass: Glass jars and containers. No lightbulbs.
Tin: Tinfoil, tin cans, tin jar lids.
Plastics: Hard Plastics that have been cleaned out (type 1 and type 2)
(Please note that the City will be updating signage on blue bins to reflect the above criteria.)
Don't know where to put an item? Use the Waste Wizard to find the proper recycling and disposal answers.