Continuing pesticide & fertilizer container plus seed & pesticide bags collections and adding fertilizer bags, bale and silage wrap and twine.
On October 26, Prince Edward Island (PE) approved Cleanfarms’ Product Stewardship Program (PSP), which will ensure that PE farmers can keep more and more ag plastics out of landfill and recirculated into the economy. The PSP responded to the provincial government’s regulation requiring the agricultural industry to operate and fund programs to recover and recycle ag packaging and products used in the province.
The PE program is the first government regulated extended producer responsibility program for agricultural plastics in the Maritime provinces.
Click here for approval-related documents.
What does this mean for the PEI’s agricultural sector?
Good agricultural end of life stewardship will continue and expand
- Empty pesticide and fertilizer container recycling & seed and pesticide bag collection programs will continue.
- Next year, farmers will have the opportunity to divert their fertilizer bags.
- Existing pilots for bale/silage wrap and twine will expand over the next year.
New stakeholder advisory committee
The team at Cleanfarms is looking forward to setting up a Stakeholder Advisory Committee. This committee not will only advise Cleanfarms in implementation of the PSP, it will also help to disseminate information to help keep stakeholders informed.
For more information:
Cleanfarms will continue to add new information to a dedicated webpage for this program as it develops.
We encourage you to contact Kim Timmer, Cleanfarms’ Director of Stakeholder Relations & Policy, for any questions as the program develops.
Building on leadership
Cleanfarms is an agricultural industry stewardship organization that contributes to a healthier environment and a sustainable future by recovering and recycling agricultural and related industry plastics, packaging and products. It is funded by its members in the crop protection, seed, fertilizer, animal health medication, ag plastics industries. It currently has offices located in Lethbridge, Alberta; Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Etobicoke, Ontario; and St-Bruno, Quebec.
For more than 30 years, farmers have recycled their empty pesticide containers through a voluntary, industry-funded recycling program, with ag-retailers acting as collection points. Fertilizer containers, along with seed and pesticide bags, were then added to the types of packaging that farmers turned in to their ag-retailer for proper recycling or disposal. Most recently, Island Waste Management Corporation (IWMC) began to work with farmers to recycle other types of agricultural plastics, like silage bags, silage bunker covers and tarps and bale/silage wrap. A Cleanfarms-led pilot project then brought a baler twine recycling pilot into the province.
Source : Cleanfarms.ca