London Drugs in New Westminster have launched the first-ever Halloween candy wrapper recycling drive in B.C. The retailer is now accepting chocolate bar and candy wrappers as well as potato chip bags as part of its Other Flexible Plastic Packagingrecycling program and hopes to help keep Halloween snack packaging waste out of city landfills.
“We want to help British Columbians celebrate Halloween with a bit less waste by making one simple suggestion: instead of throwing out your candy wrappers and chip bags, bring them to London Drugs for recycling,” said Maury McCausland with London Drugs.
Customers can bring their wrapper and Other Flexible Plastic Packagingto any location. The items collected will be sent to Merlin Plastics, a post-consumer processing company in Delta and used for research and development as the company works to develop a commercially viable process for recycling these common but tough-to-process items. Material that cannot be recycled will be used to produce engineered fuel for commercial operations such as concrete plants.
London Drugs’ Other Flexible Plastic Packaging recycling initiative is part of RecycleBC’s new take-back program. These types of plastics are among the fastest-growing packaging forms on the market and are one of the largest categories of packaging particularly for confectionary and snack foods. According to Stats Canada, over $550 million worth of cookies, confectionery, and snack foods were sold across Canada last October, contributing significant amounts of packaging waste to landfills and the environment. Food wrappers are also a common source of marine litter and were among the top five items foundin the Ocean Conservatory’s International Coastal Clean-up last year.
