The Container Recycling Fee: An Investment In Our Future.

Container Recycling Fee

Alberta has one of the most innovative and effective beverage container recycling programs in North America.

More than 1.4 billion containers each year are collected at the bottle depots. It’s millions of kilograms of material that gets recycled into useful end products.

Some of the money to operate the system comes from the sale of recyclable material from those containers returned. The rest comes from consumers, through unredeemed deposits and the Container Recycling Fee.

Beverages come in different containers, which are made of a variety of materials. The containers have different recycling fees, because they have different costs of recycling.

What is the fee? The Container Recycling Fee covers the net cost to recover and process used beverage containers, and to ensure that Alberta maintains an effective and sustainable recycling system.
What does it cost? Costs vary with the material and the size of the container. These costs are monitored regularly and usually changed annually on February 1st.
Do the value of the recovered materials and the unredeemed deposits cover the costs? The commodity value and unredeemed deposits generally only cover part of the system costs. The Container Recycling Fee covers the rest of the system costs.
Isn’t the recycling fee just another government tax? No. None of the Container Recycling Fee or the deposit monies goes to any level of government. The Container Recycling Fee helps to pay a part of the cost of recycling containers as recycling is required by regulation.
Who administers this fee? The Container Recycling Fee is administered by ABCRC, the not-for-profit stewardship agency. The Container Recycling Fee is not a government tax and no funds from the fees are paid to government. The fees are used in their entirety to operate the Common Collection System to the benefit of all Albertans.
Who benefits from this fee? We all do. The Container Recycling Fee simply shows the net costs of recycling left over after other funds like unredeemed deposits and money from the sale of recyclable materials are used.
Where does the money go? The money collected from the Container Recycling Fee, plus the money from the sale of commodities, and any money left over from unclaimed (unredeemed) deposits, is used to pay for the collection, handling, transportation and processing of the containers. All of these tasks are performed by independent private operators who work under contract to ABCRC. There are dozens of companies and hundreds of people employed in Alberta as a result of this program.
Why is the recycling fee different on different beverages? The Container Recycling Fee is the net cost of recycling each type of container. Since different containers cost different amounts to recycle, the fee is also different.
Why is the recycling fee being shown? By showing the fee separately, consumers can see the direct costs of recycling.
Why do I pay the recycling fee in some stores but not others? Some retailers may choose not to show the recycling fee separately.
What happens to the containers? Each container type is recycled. See the Container Information page for more information.

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