A planetary atlas of material flowsOpening this view…
Start with an everyday object or material.
Jump directly to a material, regional account or named facility.
From polymer to durable product. Explore the use, collection and processing journeys of bulky plastics such as furniture and toys.
Manufacturing makes a durable product such as a chair or toy. It sits outside the packaging stream described by Recycle BC’s end-market percentages.
Product composition affects possible recovery routes.
Continued use, repair and reuse retain the product’s function.
Broken or unwanted items need an appropriate destination.
Hartland’s public depot names a separate route for certain bulky plastics.
Local acceptance is specific to the operator and item.
CRD describes grinding these inputs and combining them for a landfill operation.
This does not make new consumer plastic products.
The mixture covers the active landfill area. This is a documented use at the disposal site.
The source does not provide an item-level allocation or a mass balance.
Explore the local operations and regional systems that collect, transform and recover this material.
Checking available records…
A whole-economy view of what ultimately happens to plastic waste.
No. Recycle BC’s packaging route supplies recycling end markets. Hartland describes a landfill-cover use for certain non-packaging rigid plastics.