Canadian Farmers Set Record Recycling Rate For Ag-Plastic Jugs

Jun 02, 2021

In 2020, the recycling rate for empty ag plastic pesticide and fertilizer containers rose to 76% from 71% in 2019. This sets an all-time record for recycling empty ag plastic jugs in Canada.

Every year for the past 32 years, Cleanfarms has calculated the rolling three-year average recycling rate of agricultural pesticide and fertilizer containers that are 23L and smaller. The recycling rate measures the percentage of containers collected for recycling compared to the number of containers sold into the market in that year. The three-year rolling average recovery rate evens out the rate over three years taking into consideration factors which could cause variations such as differing needs due to weather. The rolling average rate in 2018 was 64%.

“Canadian farmers deserve huge credit for these unparalleled results,” said Cleanfarms Executive Director Barry Friesen. “They are bringing back rinsed, empty containers in increasing numbers year over year, which means more of these ag plastic jugs are getting recycled into new products in a circular economy.”

In total, farmers returned more than 5.5 million pesticide and fertilizer jugs 23L and smaller in 2020.

Canadian farmers typically purchase crop input products such as fertilizers and pesticides in easy-to-handle 23L jugs. The crop protection industry started a volunteer stewardship program for empty containers in 1989. In 2010, Cleanfarms took over the program and expanded it nationally. Until four years ago, the recycling rate hovered annually between 60% and 65%.

In addition to farmers, Cleanfarms attributes the increased recycling rate to the more than 1,200 ag-retail and municipal operations across the country that run recycling collection sites and that work with farmers to get the empty, rinsed containers back. Cleanfarms is also developing incentive programs like offering free recycling collection bags that make it easier for farmers to collect, store and transport empty containers.

“For the last few years in our promotion and education materials we’ve been asking farmers to bring back 100% of their empty containers. We want to recycle every one of them and it looks like we’re getting closer to that goal,” added Friesen. “We know Canadian farmers are committed stewards of their land and that they want to be environmentally responsible when it comes to how they manage this plastic ag packaging on their farms. We are grateful that they are responding positively to these programs."

Recovered agricultural plastics are recycled into new products such as farm drainage tile, flexible irrigation pipe and plastic bags.

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”