Our latest report is now available: Product Stewardship: An overview of recycling in B.C.
Our project team saw indicators that the recycling program in B.C. is working well in some of the areas we looked at. Government regulates recycling in B.C., but collection and recycling is carried out by producers and stewardship agencies like Multi-Material BC.
The team also identified opportunities for improvement like expanding access to recycling services to more communities across the province, ensuring regulatory compliance and greater financial transparency. Government is aware of these opportunities and is working to implement them.
As such, we decided that a full audit wouldn't add value at this time. Government has components of a well-managed program in place, and they need time to pursue and implement their planned improvements. We will continue to monitor government's progress to determine if we need to do further work in this area in the future.
While not an audit, the report summarizes our research into B.C.'s recycling programs. We're issuing it to help legislators and interested parties better understand B.C.'s recycling program, and to fulfill our public commitment to examine this topic as per our Performance Audit Coverage Plan.
Watch a short summary of this report on our YouTube page.
