Are you new to Saskatchewan? New to recycling? Or maybe you’ve been coming by for years, but find yourself wondering: How do you do SARCAN? Well, you’ve come to the right place!

We are here to help take the guesswork out of recycling and fill you in on everything you need to know – what we take, where and how to bring it, why it matters, and more!

With the many, many items that you can recycle at SARCAN and all the different ways you can make your return, the question isn’t “how do you do SARCAN?”, it’s….

To prep like a pro, just follow these simple steps!

Go on a virtual tour of SARCAN!

Learn the ins and outs of SARCAN – we’ll tell you about our history, walk through visiting a depot, and show you what we take and what we do with it before hopping over to our Processing plant where we show you how we consolidate everything that SARCAN accepts and prepare it for shipping to downstream markets to get made into new things!

Flip off the lights and grab a bowl of popcorn – it’s SARCAN show time!

The Deposits

It all starts when you buy a beverage here in Saskatchewan.

That beverage container has a deposit on it that you pay when you buy the beverage. There is also a non-refundable Environment Handling Fee (on your receipt, it might show as EHF, EHC, or simply ‘Enviro’). These types of fees are applied on a wide variety of products, beverage containers included, and help cover the cost of safe and responsible recycling of that product.

When you bring your empty containers to SARCAN, you get your deposit refunded. This is an incentive-based system to encourage people to recycle their containers. If you toss your containers, not only are you throwing away useful, valuable materials – you are also throwing your money away!

SARCAN is proof that the deposit system works. On average, every year over 80% of all containers bought in Saskatchewan are returned to a SARCAN depot – which is huge! That means millions of pounds of resources are recovered and diverted from our landfills every year. And an incredible amount of money going back into our communities.

Here is a list of the deposits and fees that you pay on your containers when you buy them, and what you get back when you bring it in to SARCAN:

Container Type	Environment Handling Fee	Refundable Deposit
Aluminum and Tin Cans	7¢	Up to 999 ml: 10¢ 1L & Over: 25¢
Plastic Bottles & Jugs	8¢	Up to 999 ml: 10¢ 1L & Over: 25¢
Clear and Coloured Glass	9¢	Up to 300 ml: 10¢ 301-999 ml: 20¢ 1L & Over: 40¢
Cartons and Juice Boxes	5¢	Up to 999 ml: 10¢ 1L & Over: 25¢
Refillable Beer Bottles	No EHF	One size (341 ml): 5¢

The Facilities

The next step, of course, is having SARCAN depots in our communities for you to bring those containers to.

Over the past three and a half decades, we have worked hard at tailoring our processes and setting up our depots to make those processes as efficient as possible. Not just efficient with our operations, but also with our building efficiencies. High-efficiency heating and ventilation, low-impact materials used in construction, and more.

SARCAN also has two processing plants in the province, one in Regina and one in Saskatoon. All of the material collected at the depot goes to these plants to get further processed and prepared for shipping to downstream markets. These plants are treated with the same eco-friendly, careful consideration as our depots, using the most efficient equipment and compaction equipment we can to ensure that our footprint stays small.

You can find your local depot on our Where To Recycle page, and if you haven’t already, definitely check out our Video Tours (just scroll up!) to get a look at our Processing plants!

The People

The very foundation of our organization is the team of recycling pros that work for SARCAN across the province.

We have an incredibly diverse and inclusive workforce of over 900 employees that work tirelessly to collect, count, sort, and process your containers to turn them into new, useful products that we all depend on in our lives.

Each employee goes through a deeply thorough and ongoing training process to ensure that everyone on the floor knows the ins and outs of the different types of materials we accept, how those materials need to be prepared for recycling, and so much more.

The people that SARCAN has on its team are dedicated to recycling, but also to sustainability as a whole, and strive every day to make sure that our depots and plants operate in the most efficient way possible.

SARCAN employees are the true rockstars of recycling, and without them, SARCAN would not be the leader in the industry that we are today.

The SARCAN Process

The deposits bring the containers in; the facilities allow us to operate efficiently; but the SARCAN process is truly what makes our system great

SARCAN Recycling is so much more than just recycling – it is resource recovery. All of the items that you bring to us – containers, paint, electronics, glass, or batteries – are made from valuable materials that don’t belong in a landfill. That material can get used in the manufacturing process to make new goods. Using these recycled resources instead of mining for new ones saves an incredible amount of energy and conserves our natural resources. No need to dig up new stuff if the stuff we already have in circulation can be used just the same.

Although, that is just recycling in a nutshell. SARCAN’s processes are what make recycling with us so efficient. All of the materials that you bring to us are hand sorted by our team of highly trained Recycling Technicians. As they count your containers to determine your refund, they are sorted into material streams – aluminum, PET plastic, HDPE plastic, Cartons, Glass, etc.

Each material stream is prepared for shipment right in our depots. We use high-efficiency compaction equipment to flatten as much of the material as we can, allowing us to fit up to 4 times as much material on our trailers for shipment.

That material is then sent to one of our two Processing Plants in either Saskatoon or Regina. These plants consolidate all of the material streams coming in from our depots across the province.

At these plants, all of the materials go through another quality control inspection by the Recycling Technicians at these plants. This just further ensures that there is no contamination in the material streams. Both the hand sort at the depots and the quality control inspection at the plants ensure an incredibly pure feedstock of material resources that downstream recyclers and manufacturers are able to use, with very little to no extra work on their part. They simply get the material from us and can immediately begin the process to turn the containers back into useful resources for the manufacturing process.

The Results

The result of this rigorous process powered by our people is cleaner, greener, more sustainable communities in our province and nation.

Over 140,000 pounds of valuable resources flow through the SARCAN system on a daily basis. The efficiency with which it flows through our system conserves resources, saves a ton of energy, offsets Greenhouse Gas emissions, creates jobs, and grows our local economy. Head to Why Recycling Matters to learn more about how SARCAN is leading the charge on sustainability!

That massive amount of material is then recycled, completely within North America, and manufactured into new products.