Car seats are notoriously difficult to recycle — they're made of mixed materials, labour-intensive to disassemble, and not covered by any provincial recycling program in B.C. Left in a landfill, they can take up to 1,000 years to decompose. For most families, dropping off an old seat means it ends up in the trash.
A pilot program launched by the Fraser Valley Regional District and Burnaby-based Reclaim Plastics is working to change that — and the response from Fraser Valley families has been remarkable.
Since launching in July 2025, the program has collected and recycled more than 1,500 car seats across collection sites in Abbotsford, Chilliwack, and Mission — nearly 10 tonnes of material diverted from landfills. The original target was 1,000 seats over two years. The program hit that number in less than six months, and has now been expanded with a goal of recycling an additional 4,000 seats by July 2027.
It's not a simple process. Recycling a single car seat takes up to 45 minutes of manual labour using specialized tools — and most of that work is done by hand.
"Deconstructing a car seat is a highly labour-intensive process," says Bash Jamal, co-founding and managing partner at Reclaim Plastics. "While the process is time-intensive, recycling these materials plays a crucial role in diverting waste from landfills, where they can take up to 1,000 years to decompose and impose heightened risks for climate change, environmental pollution and human health."
Done correctly, almost every component of a car seat can be given a second life: plastic shells become pellets used in auto parts or outdoor furniture, metal frames become new steel products, and foam is repurposed for underlay or soundproofing.
Roughly 85,000 to 100,000 used and expired car seats are thrown into B.C. landfills every year, according to BCAA. The Fraser Valley program is the first of its kind in B.C., and the FVRD hopes the data collected will support advocacy for a province-wide Extended Producer Responsibility program that would make car seat recycling a regulated, accessible option for all B.C. families.
