REGINA — The City of Regina is warning residents about high levels of contamination in recycling bins.
Currently, 18 per cent of items thrown into blue bins aren’t recyclable materials, triple the amount allowed by SK Recycles (six per cent), which the city contracts for pickup and disposal of the bins.
Carolyn Kalim, City of Regina director of waste, water and environment, talked about the frequent items contaminating blue bin recycling at a media event Tuesday.
“Flexible plastics are really any plastic that you can deform, stretch or squish. That’s everything from chip bags to bubble wrap to those plastic mailers that you might receive in the mail to plastic bags.”
She also said recyclable materials tied into bags are causing high contamination rates.
Kalim admitted residents likely still aren’t aware of the changes to what is and isn’t allowed in blue bins after SK Recycles took over recycling operations effective July 2025.
Those changes include now allowing:
- Coffee cups (recycle lid, cup and sleeve separately);
- Ice cream cartons and frozen dessert boxes;
- Plastic dental floss containers;
- Plastic tape dispensers;
- Empty single-use coffee pods.
Meanwhile, glass containers and jars, flexible plastics and foam packaging (like chip bags and plastic wrap), and green Nespresso pods are no longer allowed.
Glass containers and jars can be placed in garbage bins or dropped off at SARCAN. Flexible plastics and foam packaging are also accepted for drop-off at SARCAN locations. For recycling Nespresso pod bags, the city encourages residents to check the company’s website for recycling information.
With these changes, the city has rolled out educational pieces.
“We have mailed out new waste sorting guides to every household. We’re often at events in the community, handing out magnets and other educational materials. We have different ad campaigns that we’ve run. We have a new one coming out about the waste wizard and checking that to ensure proper recycling,” said Kalim.
While educating residents is their current objective, the city could face fines from SK Recycles as a last resort.
“We can start at $5,000 fines per load from SK Recycles for contamination rates. And I think that it’s essentially an escalating process where we could be seeing upwards of $600,000 of fines annually for continued recycling contamination,” said Kalim.
“That’s a large dollar value when we think about the cost of our recycling services. And we want to keep that cost low,” she added.
Beyond cost, contaminated materials can also cause issues at the recycling facility.
“If a type of contaminant that’s going to spread throughout the load, it may contaminate the entire load and turn it into material that ends up having to be landfilled in a worst-case scenario,” said Kalim.
The city is currently working to extend the lifespan of its landfill, and closing it would come with costs. Similarly, building a new landfill would also require significant capital investment.
With all this in mind, the city and SK Recycles will continue working on bringing the contamination rates down to six per cent.
