Car seat recycling is coming to the valley. But will program meet demand from thousands of parents?

For many parents, recycling is a way of life. On Craigslist and Facebook, huge groups of parents buy and sell second-hand clothes, toys, and gear to reduce the costs of outfitting their children.

But even the thriftiest of parents is unlikely to buy a used car seat. That means thousands of car seats are bought new, spend a few years in the backseat covered in kid detritus, and are then thrown in the garbage when the child outgrows it. Soon, though, a new Fraser Valley program may stem the flow of car carriers to local dumps.

A car seat’s short life

Although it’s not technically illegal to buy, use, or sell a child’s used car seat, health authorities discourage the use of second-hand seats—especially if the buyer can’t be certain if the seat has ever been in a crash before.

Other safety rules mean the seats typically have a short lifespan anyway. Many car seats “expire” six to 10 years after purchase, due to changing safety rules and material degradation. Many modern seats can also be adjusted to suit newborns, toddlers, and elementary school-aged children, meaning that a seat’s end-of-life date may arrive soon after it is finally outgrown.

All that means that most car seats end up headed to a landfill once a child outgrows it. And in BC and the Fraser Valley, that means tens of thousands of large, bulky seats end up trashed every year.

BCAA estimates that up to 100,000 car seats end up in the province’s landfills each year. That figure may be an overstatement given that around 40,000 children are born in BC annually. But if there are 2.5 seats for every child, as BCAA suggests, that would leave more than 10,000 seats heading to the Fraser Valley’s landfills every year. Even if the number is much lower, the Fraser Valley’s 5,000 annual births inevitably translate to thousands of big, bulky seats that need to be thrown away.

Recycling is possible. There are a smattering of other recycling programs around the province. All charge fees—most around $15.

But the valley’s only recycling site is in Hope, where people can recycle a car seat for a fee of $15 each.

That will soon change.

The Fraser Valley Regional District has greenlit a two-year program to recycle car seats across the valley. And it’s set to become the first BC program where car seats can be recycled for free.

The regional district is partnering with Reclaim Plastics, a Lower Mainland recycling company, to set up car seat recycling sites in Abbotsford, Mission, and Chilliwack.

Parents will be able to drop off old car seats at the locations, which have yet to be announced. Reclaim Plastics will then disassemble the seat. The styrofoam padding will be shredded and re-used, the metal components will be recycled, and the plastic will be processed into pellets for later use. Only the textile covering will end up in a landfill.

The FVRD says the program will cost a maximum of $23,500, with the collection, transportation, and processing of each car seat costing about $20.

That should facilitate the recycling of about 1,200 car seats that would otherwise end up in the dump. But 1,200 car seats are just a fraction of the total likely disposed of every year in the region. If the program is more popular with parents than expected, the FVRD would either shorten its length or approve more funding, according to a spokesperson.

The program will also be a test case, and FVRD staff say data will help determine future car seat disposal plans.

The regional district hopes that its program may not be needed for long. A spokesperson noted that a provincial program, like those for tires, paper products, and beverage containers, could eventually organize car seat disposal across British Columbia.

But the provincial government might not be particularly enthusiastic about taking responsibility for the cumbersome and potentially expensive duty of recycling old car seats. In recent years, the Fraser Valley has had trouble convincing the province to get on board to recycle other challenging products as well.

Farmers who operate an agricultural recycling program that started in Agassiz over a decade ago have repeatedly requested provincial support with no success. The province originally kicked in $10,000 for an FVRD pilot project in 2010, but did not continue to support the program when the pilot finished. Now, the province is participating in another, similar pilot project in the Fraser Valley, which will supposedly be used to inform a “comprehensive plan for the province” on agricultural recycling. It’s not clear when that plan would come into effect.

The FVRD has repeatedly expressed hope that its program would lead to a BC-wide initiative. It has been 15 years now, and while local agriculture recycling continues, the province has yet to take over the effort.