An environmental services supervisor with the Thompson-Nicola Regional District says B.C. is better off than most of North America when it comes to a challenging world market for recycling.

Jamie Vieira says many jurisdictions have struggled to find buyers to re-use recycled waste.

“It’s been a huge in North America in the last year and a half, of lack of recycling markets worldwide and changing recycling markets worldwide. The long and short of it is China introduced much stricter regulation around quality and cleanliness of recycling they will receive. And therefore the market isn’t able to adapt,” Vieira says.

“We’re fortunate to have a province-wide stewardship organization called RecycleBC. The TNRD as well as the City of Kamloops participate in the program. So RecycleBC is tasked with marketing the material and finding those international markets.”

Vieira says RecycleBC also has developed in-house markets for some commodities to cut back what is shipped overseas. He adds many other areas of North America do not have a similar program.