Yellowknife Recycling Program
Yellowknife has had a recycling program since 1990, when Ecology North identified the need for one and started a recycling pilot project. The City took over the program in 1994 and has been running it since then. The current program uses a self drop-off station system, where residents bring their recyclable items to blue bins at multiple locations across the city.
When the blue bins are nearly full they are taken to the City landfill and the items are compressed into bales. The bales are then shipped to Edmonton where they will be transported to recycling facilities and transformed into new goods!
If you see a blue bin that is messy, full or overflowing Blue Bin Station, please use the Click and Fix YK reporting system. This will help the City of Yellowknife serve you best and address issues according to priority.
Properly Sorting Recyclables is Crucial!
Residents and businesses are encouraged to adopt a sorting system that fits their needs. Doing so will make it easier to bring and sort recyclables at the Blue Bin Stations.
Please take your time when sorting recycling at the blue bin stations. The City does not have the capacity to sort through and separate all the recycling in the bins, therefore residents have to help from the start. When there is a highly contaminated load that is full of items that are not recyclable or items in the wrong category, it may have to be thrown in the garbage instead of being recycled. We ask that you place all recycling in the correct blue bins to effectively support recycling efforts of other residents.
What Can You Recycle?
Below is a list of items accepted at all of the Yellowknife Blue Bin Recycling Stations:
- Paper products: there are three categories of paper recycling that must be separated:
- Cardboard (corrugated - with wavy lines between layers)
- Mixed Paper (Ink and staples are acceptable)
- Boxboard (cereal boxes)
- Colour, glossy, or brown paper
- Magazines and flyers
- White or loose leaf paper
- Ink and staples are acceptable
- Newspaper
- Glass: glass jars and containers. No lightbulbs
- Tin: tinfoil, tin cans, tin jar lids.
- Plastics: #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7. Type #6 plastics are currently not accepted in the blue bin stations
Where Can You Bring Recycling?
There are multiple 'self drop-off' blue bin recycling stations in Yellowknife that you can access any time of the day and any day of the week:
- YK Direct Charge Co-op parking lot
- Finlayson Drive & Kam Lake Rd (corner)
- Beside Olexin Park on 52 Street and 54 Avenue
- Corner of School Draw Avenue and Franklin Avenue
- City Landfill