Car seats plugging up the province’s landfills could be a thing of the past should the two women behind Kidseat Recyclers succeed in taking out the trash.
Kidseat Recyclers, a car seat recycling company, is the brainchild of Calgary-based duo Melanie Risdon-Betcher and LaVonne Ries. Last year, they teamed up with Friendly Earth, a recycling company, to keep the bulky car seats from the garbage.
Kidseat Recyclers typically service Calgary and area with drop off sites in Calgary, Airdrie and Didsbury.
Inside the Central Alberta Family Expo at the Westerner, however, Central Albertans had the chance to use a makeshift recycling depot for unwanted and expired car seats throughout the weekend.
“In Alberta alone 52,000 babies are born every year,” said Risdon-Betcher. “Even if you are being conservative and you say only half of those children are going to have a car seat. There are about 25,000 car seats hitting the landfill at any given time. We want to be a part of keeping those out of the landfills.”
A $7 levy is charged per car seat to cover the cost of breaking down the low grade plastic and repackaging to sell it on the marketplace. Kidseat Recyclers rely on volunteers to strip down the car seats after more volunteers pick up the seats from the drop off locations. Seats still in good shape and have not yet expired are donated through Neighbour Link to families in need. Ries, a certified children’s restraint safety technician, will inspect the seats before they are donated.
The team picks up between 60 and 80 car seats a week from the sites.
Risdon-Betcher said the volume has increased significantly since the early days in 2010, and they are struggling to keep up with the demand.
“People have had these in their garages and they have been looking for a place to recycle them and here we are,” said Risdon-Betcher.
Increasing the levy to $10 may be an option so they can hire staff to strip the seats and sort the materials. The company is trying to gain not-for-profit status so it can apply for funding and grants. At the same time the company is looking to expand to markets like Red Deer.
“The problem with it again is the funding,” said Risdon-Betcher. “Being that this is an oil rich province (and) being that this is a petroleum by-product, I think any oil company positioning themselves with our company would be very smart because it is keeping their end product out of the landfill so that’s what we are really hoping for.”
Friendly Earth donated and hauled the recycling bin to Red Deer for the expo and hauled it back to Calgary for recycling. Click on the Recycling Events link on www.kidseatrecyclers.ca on upcoming round up clinics.
crhyno@www.reddeeradvocate.com