Beverage containers piled up in homes throughout the province during the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that people are able to turn them in, they’re piling up at green depots.
All four depots operated by Ever Green Recycling in St. John’s were closed for varying lengths of time on Thursday as workers dealt with a deluge of bottles, cans and cartons.
Business had been brisk since the depots re-opened, with restrictions, earlier this month as the province moved to Level 4 in its pandemic-related regulations. However, as the weather warmed up Thursday, it seemed to bring even more people to depots.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Michael Wadden, president and CEO of Ever Green, a non-profit organization.
“Obviously, we knew our operations weren’t designed to handle seven weeks of product in just two weeks, but I think it is fair to say this has been even more than we expected.”
Not just a busy day
The problem went beyond volumes of customers and containers at Ever Green’s Elizabeth Avenue location, which was closed much of the day on Thursday after the discovery of a safety issue.
“It was a case of an exit door being obstructed,” said Wadden, who said the Elizabeth Avenue depot is expected to be back in operation today.
Shutdowns at the other locations — Blackmarsh Road, Torbay Road and Waterford Bridge Road/Cowan Avenue — were for shorter periods, with the flagship Blackmarsh depot closed for about an hour, according to Wadden.
Because of current public health guidelines, all recyclable containers are being turned for deposit in using Ever Green’s Xpress service, whereby a customer’s pre-registered account number (or in the case of donations, that of a charitable organization or particular cause) is attached to the bags of bottles and such. But even though that helps in spreading out the workflow, the backups occurred.
“We put measures in when we re-opened, we’ve been making adjustments since then and it’s guaranteed there will be more that will have to be made,” said Wadden. “This is all new territory for us.”
Workers still need their space
One of the adjustments is to have more people working night shifts, which helps address the fact that compared to pre-pandemic days, there are less workers counting containers at any one time, reductions made necessary because of need to maintain space between people.
“We do have less people working during out regular shifts because of distancing requirements, but there is actually the same overall number working as before,” said Wadden. “They’re just working at different times.”
Even with different arrangements, Wadden expects it will be some time before employees completely reduce the backlog which in some cases, has seen bags of bottles and cabs being stacked from floor to ceiling.
“Maybe by the end of June it will be more like normal,” he said, “and even then, things will never be quite like they were before.”
