River Valley Chamber of Commerse

Bayview Redemption

Polyethylene Terephthalate.  Huh?!

Well you can call it PETE for short; commonly found in beverage bottles - and PETE’s a good thing! One of the largest uses of recycled PETE from bottles is fibre for carpets, blankets, upholstery and stuffing for ski jackets, cushions, mattresses and sleeping bags. Other uses for recycled PETE are packaging applications (such as new bottles), sheet (e.g., for use in billboards) and engineered resins (e.g., automotive parts).

Motorola has unveiled a cell phone made of recycled water bottles. Pop cans are recycled for their aluminum and turn into other beverage and food containers like foil, pie plates, frozen food trays, candy wrappers and even car bodies.

But before it gets into your cell phone or helps to hold together that coconut cream pie so it makes the trip home, your recycled beverage containers (except milk) need to begin their journey through a recycling depot. And that’s where your friendly, neighbourhood Bayview Redemption Centre comes in.

Around since 1998, John Hamm (current proprietor) went into business with Doug Smith (Dean Construction) and two years later, John struck out on his own, changing the name from ‘Grand Bay Redemption’ to ‘Bayview Redemption’.

Bayview Redemption is a newer member with the Chamber of Commerce because ‘it seemed like the right thing to do’ - to join forces with the local business community although it wasn’t a stretch to reinforce his identity since John is originally from this area.

There isn’t a sign down by the driveway but everyone knows where it is.

“Diane Bormke used to call it ‘The Big Barn’, she used to call and see if we were putting our ad in the paper again, ‘Are you putting your ad in again for ‘The Big Barn?’ ”

All those beverage containers are stacked up, bagged up and off they go to Hebert’s Recycling in the Miramichi.

“We’re not a really big recycling depot, we probably fill 50 - 75 of the bags in the summer; larger depots probably fill 150 - 200.”

Which brings us to a key bit of information - if you have a tendancy to try and impress someone with your feats of strength by flattening a can with your bare hands: don’t. Flattened cans in one of those ginormous bags makes for a much heavier load to transport as compared to unflattened. Makes sense.

Randomly the bags are audited (yes, even the harmless beverage container is susceptible to the fearless audit) which means the count is manually checked at the Miramichi plant to ensure everything is by-the-by. Then off to the buyer to turn them into snuggly blankets and electronic devices.

A couple times a year all the area recycling operators meet in Fredericton to discuss business practises and different issues since they all answer to the Beverage Container Act.

Who knew how intricate the business of recycling could be - from buying the beverage, to recycling, to handling to transformation - hold up high the lowly pop can or beer bottle and know the journey it will make. Sounds like thirsty business but that’s exactly the pickle that got us into this recycling phenomena.

“The drier the summer, the drier the customer” laughs John, “the weather tells us how busy we’re going to be and so far this summer, we’ve been really busy”.

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