After nearly 20 years of accepting the community’s cans and bottles for recycling at its Manitoba Street location, SARCAN will soon move to a new location in the north end of town.
Construction crews began work in April on a new $3.95 million, 11,000-square-foot recycling depot at 52 Highland Road in the Grayson Business Park. The organization expects the new venue to open in December or January and will hold a grand opening.
According to Chantelle Diakuw, SARCAN’s assistant director of collections, the new building will be “bigger, better and brighter” and offer more chutes for orders, a more spacious customer reception area, a drop-off area that is double in size, a larger parking lot and more space to collect bulk orders.
There will also be new, more efficient equipment to help with recycling.
“SARCAN has grown tremendously since we first occupied that depot in Moose Jaw. We have more than doubled the volume of materials we collect … and we have seen huge growth in customer traffic,” she said.
Last year The Friendly City’s depot collected 17.6 million containers and had roughly 56,000 customer visits. Diakuw thought those numbers were positive, along with the fact the staff — all are from Diversified Services — do a great job of collecting and recycling containers.
“We have a great relationship with them (Diversified Services) and always have,” she stated.
It was pointed out to Diakuw that many depot customers are of low socio-economic status, don’t have vehicles and walk to deliver their bags of containers. With the new building being more than four kilometres north, that might pose a problem for some people.
“Customers visit SARCAN in all kinds of ways. They walk, they bike, they carpool,” she said. “The new depot is on a bus route and is accessible that way as well.”
Diakuw added that she was “super excited” about the new depot — especially since she is from Moose Jaw — and thought everyone else would be thrilled with the new building too.
According to SARCAN’s website, it has collected and recycled more than 10 billion containers during its 35 years.
Its most recent data from 2021-22 shows 84 per cent of all containers purchased in Saskatchewan were returned, which equals 498,934,625 units or more than 47 million pounds of materials diverted from landfills.
Furthermore, it collected 1,112,923 pounds of paint, 3,386,712 pounds of electronics, 54,168 pounds of batteries, and eliminated 50,662 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, which equalled removing 10,756 vehicles from the road and powering 9,328 homes with the saved energy.
SARCAN is the recycling division of SARC, the province-wide association that provides services to community-based organizations that support people experiencing disability, and works in contract with the Government of Saskatchewan to recycle beverage containers bought in the province, along with other items.
