Recycling and Green Cart Information (and More) for Brandon, MB

Brandon has two services available through the city for recycling and composting.

1. Green Cart Program– Brandon’s green cart program is a great option for composting provided upon registration at no extra cost to homeowners. It’s to be put out next to your recycling and garbage carts to be picked up by the city at which time they take it to be processed/composted into reusable material that the city uses for their various gardening exploits and can also be picked up and used by us residents as well for our lovely gardening exploits. The city of Brandon website has a great page with more information on why the program was started as well as what can and can’t be composted in the bins. They’ve estimated that roughly 30 to 50% of Brandon’s waste is organic (in other words about that amount of perfectly good compostable material gets thrown into the landfill unable to biodegrade properly) and as of 2015 there were only about 5500 single family homes out of the 15,500+ in the city that were actually taking advantage of the green program so imagine if we could encourage more families to get involved in this great idea how much waste we could be reducing for the landfill. For more FAQ click here and for more info on what can and can’t be composted in this program click here.
2. Recycling Program- The Brandon recycling program is another great service already provided to most homes and apartments (if you do not have one you can also request through the city website or by calling the city). These materials collected are processed and shipped around the country/North America to be made into new items. The city of Brandon website also has a FAQ page as well as one for information on what can and can’t be placed in the carts here.
3. Recycle Manitoba– For everything else that can be recycled but not through these two programs check out http://www.recyclemanitoba.ca/ — they are an excellent resource to find out exactly where you can recycle those “odd” items (everything from plastic bags to electronics to medications etc.). Many stores in town provide these services and all you have to do is drop your stuff off at their locations.
4. Nearly New Store- I wanted to include this last place because I feel like the Nearly New Store is a very underappreciated and underused location in town for donating you preloved clothing/fashion, books, kitchen, etc. items that you no longer appreciate but could be used by someone else. I like this store because nearly 100% of the proceeds go towards the hospital in town for purchasing much needed equipment with only 1 full time store manager and about 70 employees that donate about 700 hours of their time a month. They are located at 601 9th Street in Brandon (right next to superstore).