Recycling of Small Appliances in British Columbia, Canada

The ElectroRecycle Program developed by the Canadian Electrical Stewardship Association offers recycling solutions in British Columbia for small appliances and power tools by providing collection facilities, transporters and processors.

Diana Butron

In Canada people can bring their e-waste to a variety of municipal, non-profit, retail and other depots or special events to be reused or recycled in an environmentally responsible way (1). Depending on the location one can contact the corresponding municipality to find about certified e-waste programs and the detailed list of electronics materials that can and cannot be sent to the recycling centers. Canada’s Environment and Climate Change website provides an available an inventory of recycling programs across Canada for the collection of Electronic Waste. (2)

In British Columbia the Canadian Electrical Stewardship Association (CESA), a not-for-profit organization made up by retailers, manufacturers, importers and distributors developed The ElectroRecycle Program. This program offers recycling solutions for small appliances and power tools by providing collection facilities, transporters and processors.

The ElectroRecycle program works in 3 steps. First, check if the product you wish to recycle is accepted. On their website they have a list of over 400 types of small appliances, power tools and exercise equipment they accept. The second step is to find a recycling location near to you, which can be done with the recycling locator in their website. Finally. The product can be dropped off free of charge with the assurance it will be responsible recycled.

After the appliances have been dropped, they are placed in a large container. Once these containers are full, they are picked up by a truck and transported to a recycling facility in Canada. In the recycling facility the staff knows how to manually sort and separate the items by product type.  The sorted material continues in a conveyor belt which leads to a mechanized processing system which further sorts the material into features such as weight, colour and size. Materials like metal and plastic are broken down into small pellets. The scrap outputs and pellets are then sent to refineries and converted into new commodities like new products. Overall, 95% of the material of small appliances are recycled.      

CESA collected 5,762,044 kg of product in 2023. CESA’s 2023 Annual Report to Member’s established that 98% of British Columbians had convenient access to a collection site for regular products and about 88% to 89% of the province’s adult population was aware that small appliances and power tools can be recycled in British Columbia. Taking the later estimate of 88% from the 2023 estimated population of 5.52 million people for British Columbia it can be assumed 4.85 million people were aware that their small appliances could be recycled. Assuming 100% of the 88% of the population used the opportunity to recycle their small appliances it can be estimated that in 2023 1.18 kg per person of small appliances was discarded to be recycled in British Columbia.  

(1) Government of Canada,(06 May, 2020). E-waste,Government of Canada. https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/office-consumer-affairs/en/be-green-consumer/e-waste

(2) Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), (17 January, 2023). Inventory of recycling programs in Canada, Government of Canada.  (https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/managing-reducing-waste/overview-extended-producer-responsibility/inventory-recycling-programs.html

(3) ElectroRecycle, (2024). Recycle your small appliances and power tools across BC., ElectroRecycle.  https://www.electrorecycle.ca/

(4) ElectroRecycle, (2024) How Small Appliances Are Recycled, ElectroRecycle. https://www.electrorecycle.ca/blog/how-small-appliances-are-recycled/

(5) CESA,(2024), Annual Report 2023, ElectroRecycle. https://www.electrorecycle.ca/app/uploads/2024/06/CESA-2023-Annual-Report-to-Members.pdf

(6) Statista Research Department, (04 July, 2024) Population estimates for British Columbia, Canada from 2000 to 2023, Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/569885/population-estimates-british-columbia-canada/