August 25, 2026

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By Denis Koshelev

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• New Brunswick expanded electronics recycling in 2026 to include nearly all plug-in household devices for free at designated collection points.

• The updated regulation shifted end-of-life management costs from taxpayers to manufacturers and importers.

• Freon-containing appliances like refrigerators and air conditioners remain excluded.

• The expanded program addresses rising e-waste generation and broadens the scope beyond legacy items, reflecting changing consumer technology habits.

 

On January 1, 2026, New Brunswick’s electronics recycling framework underwent a substantive revision. The province’s adoption of Designated Materials Regulation 2024-37 under the Clean Environment Act expanded the roster of designated electronic products from a narrow legacy list — televisions, computers, mobile phones — to encompass virtually every plug-in household device (Recycle NB, 2024). The practical implication is significant: residents may now drop off microwaves, irons, vacuum cleaners, personal care appliances, and small kitchen equipment at no charge at designated collection points across the province (Government of New Brunswick, 2025).

 

The policy change, administered through the Electronic Products Recycling Association (EPRA) and its provincial Recycle My Electronics program, is structurally supported by an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) framework that transfers end-of-life management costs from public budgets to the manufacturers and importers who place electronic products on the New Brunswick market (Recycle NB, 2024). What the headline does not address, however, is the material reality downstream of the collection point: what physical and chemical processes recyclers apply to these devices, which materials they extract and in what form, and how the economics of recovered commodity markets interact with the program’s financing model.

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Regulatory Context

 

The previous governing instrument, Regulation 2008-54, had not been substantively updated since it was introduced in 2008. By 2026, its designated product list no longer reflected the breadth of electronic devices in widespread household use. The University of Waterloo’s 2023 research documented that per capita e-waste generation in Canada had risen from approximately 8.3 kg per person in 2000 to 25.3 kg in 2020 — a tripling over two decades driven by shortened product replacement cycles, proliferating battery-powered device categories, and population growth (Habib et al., 2023).

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The Government of New Brunswick officially enacted Regulation 2024-37 on July 14, 2024, with brand owner compliance under the old regulation required through December 31, 2025, after which the new framework took sole effect (Recycle NB, 2024). The regulation added fourteen new product categories. The primary exclusion of note is freon-containing refrigeration and air conditioning equipment — refrigerators, freezers, window air conditioners, and dehumidifiers. These appliances fall outside the scope of the EPRA program because technicians must extract the refrigerant before workers can safely dismantle or shred them. Under Canada’s Federal Halocarbon Regulations, 2022, only a certified person — defined as someone who holds a valid provincial environmental awareness certificate in halocarbon recycling and recovery procedures and is recognized as qualified to work on refrigeration systems — may install, service, or recover the refrigerant from such equipment (Environment and Climate Change Canada, 2022). Facilities then reclaim, recycle, or destroy the refrigerant, depending on its type and condition, in accordance with the Ozone-depleting Substances and Halocarbon Alternatives Regulations (SOR/2016-137). Only after this certified recapture step has been completed and documented can the evacuated appliance shell — which still contains recoverable steel, copper, aluminum, and plastic — be directed to a scrap metal processor. Residents of New Brunswick with freon-containing appliances should contact their municipal solid waste authority for disposal guidance, as regional routing varies.

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In 2024, EPRA maintained a network of 80 collection sites across New Brunswick — a figure that held steady despite the closure of six privately owned redemption centres, offset by the addition of six new locations, including two transfer stations and two additional landfills (Recycle NB, 2024). The province also saw 1,298,702 individual electronic products sold in that year, establishing the baseline volume against which the expanded product list will be measured going forward (Recycle NB, 2024).

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On the collection side, EPRA recovered 962 tonnes of end-of-life electronics in New Brunswick in 2024 — a 7.5% increase over the 895 tonnes collected in 2023, and a figure that will likely rise significantly as microwaves, vacuums, irons, and other newly designated appliances enter the stream (Recycle NB, 2024). Of the 958 tonnes processed that year, 95.31% was recovered as material, 0.79% went to energy recovery, and only 3.90% ended up in landfill or energy recovery as a last resort — a material diversion rate that compares favourably with other provincial programs (Recycle NB, 2024).

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The five-year collection trend shows that volumes have remained consistently high but flat under the old, narrower product list:

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(Recycle NB, 2024)

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The five-year plateau is notable in the context of a national e-waste stream that grew from 8.3 kg per person in 2000 to 25.3 kg in 2020 (Habib et al., 2023). Whether NB’s flat collection volumes reflect the narrow scope of the old product list, consumer drop-off behaviour, or both is a question the expanded program’s first full-year data — expected in the 2026 annual report — will begin to answer.

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The Logistics of Collection and Intake

 

Understanding the journey of these discarded electronics requires examining the logistics of their initial collection. Unlike standard household recycling for cardboard or basic plastics, the electronics program does not utilize municipal curbside pickup (CBC News, 2026). Residents cannot simply leave their broken vacuum cleaners or outdated computers at the end of their driveways. Instead, all electronic items must be physically transported by the consumer to designated collection sites or authorized retail outlets participating in the program (CBC News, 2026). To facilitate this, the Recycle My Electronics organization operates a comprehensive website featuring a detailed map that indicates the nearest drop-off facilities for residents across New Brunswick (CBC News, 2026).

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Once residents drop off their electronics at these authorized locations, the Electronic Products Recycling Association takes full charge of the items. The organization directs all collected electronics to certified primary recyclers for processing. A crucial aspect of this infrastructure is the strict oversight applied to the facilities. The companies contracted to process the waste must follow an audited and approved process from the very moment they receive the materials, all the way through to their final processing. This oversight ensures that the highest environmental standards are strictly maintained at every single stage of the recycling journey. Furthermore, this tightly regulated chain of custody actively prevents electronic waste from being illegally exported to developing nations or handled by irresponsible, uncertified recyclers, thereby significantly reducing broader environmental impact on the planet (EPRA, 2025).

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"Once [the device] comes into our system, the electronics are kept in a safe and secure location, and we follow all of our devices right to the point of destruction," confirmed Karen Ulmanis, EPRA’s New Brunswick program director (CBC News, 2026). Upon arrival at processing facilities, incoming material is sorted by product category, and items are triaged based on component composition and applicable downstream pathway.

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The Deconstruction Process: Dismantling Versus Crushing

 

When examining what exactly happens to these electronic products once they enter the recycling facility, a common question arises: are the devices taken apart, or are they simply crushed?

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 According to the audited protocols of the Electronic Products Recycling Association, the answer is that the recycling process relies on a highly regulated combination of both manual dismantling and mechanical crushing, performed in a strict sequence to ensure safety (EPRA, 2025).

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The process fundamentally begins with manual intervention. Once workers collect and sort the electronics by type, staff send them into the facility for direct dismantling (EPRA, 2025). This initial stage is not merely for sorting; it is a critical de-pollution step. During the dismantling phase, workers specifically target and remove any parts that contain substances of concern. Everyday electronics frequently house highly toxic elements, most notably mercury and lead, which require extraction before any further processing can occur (EPRA, 2025a). By manually dismantling the devices and extracting these specific substances of concern for proper downstream management, the facility protects the surrounding environment from toxic contamination while simultaneously safeguarding the health and physical safety of the facility workers handling the waste (EPRA, 2025). Lithium-ion batteries are first separated from general e-waste and sent to specialized processing facilities, such as Glencore's Sudbury Smelter, for safe handling. These facilities process the batteries separately to extract and recover valuable critical materials like lithium and cobalt.

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Only after workers safely dismantle the devices and strip them of their most hazardous chemicals do they move on to the mechanical destruction phase. The remaining component materials are then processed mechanically through heavy industrial machinery (EPRA, 2025a). This mechanical processing directly involves crushing and shredding the safe, leftover components into smaller, manageable fragments (EPRA, 2025a). Following the crushing and shredding, the facilities employ magnetic separation techniques to physically sort the pulverized debris (EPRA, 2025). This sequential method — manual dismantling for safety followed by mechanical crushing and magnetic separation for efficiency — allows the facility to effectively isolate the various base materials that were previously fused together in the consumer product.

A further separation stage employs eddy current separators, which use a rapidly changing magnetic field to induce electrical currents — governed by Faraday’s Law of induction — in conductive non-ferrous metals such as copper and aluminum. These induced currents generate a repulsive force that physically ejects non-ferrous particles from the remaining mixed waste stream, propelling them into a separate collection bin. This process is distinct from standard magnetic separation, which targets only ferrous metals like iron and steel; eddy current technology is required specifically to isolate the aluminum and copper that constitute a significant share of the recovered material value (OKON Recycling, 2025).

 

Unearthing the Urban Mine: Materials Recovered

The elaborate dismantling, crushing, and magnetic separation processes are entirely driven by the profound intrinsic value of the materials locked inside everyday household electronics. The overarching purpose of the program is to successfully sort and recover recyclable materials so they can be conditioned and reused to manufacture all kinds of new consumer products (EPRA, 2025).

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The specific commodities recovered from the shredded electronic waste represent a diverse and highly valuable catalogue of natural resources. Primarily, the mechanical separation process yields large volumes of base industrial materials, specifically glass, general plastics, and various metals (EPRA, 2025). However, the most financially and environmentally significant materials recovered are the precious and highly conductive commodities hidden within the circuit boards and internal wiring of the devices. The Electronic Products Recycling Association notes that everyday electronics contain valuable commodities such as pure gold, silver, copper, and palladium (EPRA, 2025).

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Once separated, recovered materials follow distinct downstream pathways. Copper-bearing fractions and printed circuit boards are the most valuable streams and are typically shipped to Glencore’s Horne Smelter in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec — North America’s largest processor of end-of-life electronics — where copper and precious metals are extracted through pyrometallurgical smelting (Glencore Canada, 2026). Gold, silver, and palladium concentrated in the resulting anode slimes are further refined at Glencore’s CCR refinery in Montreal or shipped to large-scale precious metal refineries.

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This localized recovery process plays a critical role in global conservation efforts. By capturing and reusing the glass, plastics, copper, and gold from existing waste, the program directly helps preserve the earth’s non-renewable natural resources, drastically reducing the environmental toll associated with mining virgin materials from the earth (EPRA, 2025).

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The refined copper re-enters wire and electronics manufacturing supply chains; recovered gold and palladium are purchased by electronics manufacturers and precious metal dealers; recovered plastics are pelletized and sold to reprocessors for use in automotive and construction applications.

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For devices containing magnetic or solid-state storage media, data destruction precedes any physical disassembly. Certified processors apply one or more of three validated methods: physical shredding, which renders the storage substrate mechanically inoperable; software-based overwriting, which writes over existing data with randomized patterns across multiple passes until original data is statistically unrecoverable; and degaussing, which exposes magnetic storage media to a powerful alternating magnetic field that disrupts the magnetic domains encoding stored data (Landbell Canada, 2024). Compliance with data destruction standards is a condition of certification for facilities operating within EPRA’s contractor network, and documentation of destruction is maintained for audit purposes.

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The Economics: Funding the Process

 

Processing millions of electronic devices through a sophisticated network of secure collection depots, manual dismantling stations, and heavy mechanical crushing facilities requires substantial financial backing. A common assumption is that the lucrative sale of recovered gold, silver, and copper fully pays for the recycling operations. While the materials are indeed sold to manufacturers, the primary financial engine that guarantees the ongoing operation and administration of the program is a highly specific, upfront consumer levy known as the Environmental Handling Fee.

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The Electronic Products Recycling Association is formally funded through this Environmental Handling Fee, which is applied directly to the cost of all new electronic products sold to consumers (EPRA, 2025). The organization is explicit about the legal and financial nature of this charge: the Environmental Handling Fee is not a government tax, nor is it a refundable deposit that the consumer receives upon returning the item (EPRA, 2025). Instead, it is a calculated stewardship cost.

 

The exact amount of the fee applied to a product is not arbitrary; rather, the fee for each item in the program is meticulously based on the actual, real-world cost of safely recycling the specific materials contained in that product (EPRA, 2025). Because different devices require different levels of dismantling and processing, fees vary significantly by item.

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This upfront funding model guarantees that the recycling system remains solvent and fully operational. One hundred percent of the revenue generated from the Environmental Handling Fee is strictly utilized to fund the core pillars of the program. Specifically, all program revenue is dedicated to the collection, transportation, and responsible recycling of end-of-life electronics, as well as the overarching program administration required to maintain the audited network (EPRA, 2025). The system places the financial burden on consumers and producers participating in the electronics market, providing a stable, dedicated revenue stream to support the environmental infrastructure.

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The economics of extracting materials through recycling are remarkably favourable when compared to traditional mining. Studies reveal that the post-disassembly concentrations of most metals targeted for recycling in e-waste are actually richer than the minimum profitable ore grades found in natural mines, as noted by Johnson et al. in 2007. Furthermore, recycling these metals demands significantly less energy than mining raw mineral deposits, leading to energy savings ranging from 70% to 95% for common commodity metals such as aluminum, copper, and iron (Cui & Forssberg, 2003; Smith et al., 2019).

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The financial health and operational strategy of a recycling program are profoundly shaped by the interplay between EHF funding and commodity markets, influencing several key aspects. Firstly, maximizing returns serves to offset costs. After electronics are safely deconstructed and shredded, the recovered raw materials — metals, plastics, and glass — are sold back to manufacturers for use in new products. Operating on a strictly non-profit, cost-recovery basis, the revenue generated from selling these valuable secondary raw materials on the commodity market directly offsets the gross costs of the recycling process. Consequently, higher market values for recovered commodities alleviate the financial burden on the system.

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Secondly, this economic justification drives investment in advanced sorting technologies. To maximize financial returns, recyclers must invest in highly accurate sorting. For instance, if valuable non-ferrous fines, such as copper and aluminum, are mixed with ferrous metals like iron, the entire mixed load will typically be valued at the much lower ferrous rate by the market, resulting in a substantial loss of potential revenue. Because high-value metals like copper command premium prices on the commodity market, recycling facilities are economically justified in investing in advanced, expensive separation technologies — such as eddy current separators, X-ray transmission (XRT), and electrostatic separation — to ensure they extract maximum value from the waste stream (OKON Recycling, 2025).

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Finally, dynamic fee adjustments and producer credits are a crucial component of the system. As the EPR program functions as a closed-loop financial system, fluctuations in commodity market values and operational costs directly impact producers. Should the program generate excess money in a given year — whether due to high commodity market prices lowering the net cost of processing, or simply collecting more EHF revenue than was spent — this surplus is not retained as profit. Instead, it is recorded as a liability at year-end and credited toward future producer payments in the subsequent fiscal year. This mechanism, as detailed by the Government of New Brunswick in 2025, ensures the financing model remains balanced with the real-world economics of material recovery.

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The January 2026 expansion is, in structural terms, the easy part. Regulation 2024-37 rewrites a list; what follows is operational. Eighty collection sites, designed around a product set that excluded microwaves and vacuum cleaners, must now absorb a dramatically broader stream of household discards. The 962 tonnes recovered in 2024 — itself a partial recovery from a three-year plateau — will serve as the baseline against which the expansion’s real-world reach is measured. The 2026 annual report will be the first meaningful test: whether collection volumes climb, whether the EHF schedule holds, and whether the material diversion rate of 95.31% survives contact with a more complex incoming waste stream.
 

References

 

CBC News. (2026, January 8). Almost anything you can plug in can now be recycled in N.B. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/electronics-recycling-list-nb-expanded-9.7036915

Government of New Brunswick. (2025, July 14). Annual report 2024–2025: Environment and Local Government / Recycle NB. https://www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Gateways/ABCs/Annual-reports1/2024-2025/ELG-RNB-2024-2025-annual-report-E.pdf

Recycle NB. (2024). Industry: Electronics program. https://www.recyclenb.com/industry-electronics-program

Landbell Canada. (2024, October 16). What happens to e-waste that is recycled? https://landbellcanada.com/what-happens-to-e-waste-that-is-recycled/

Recycle My Electronics New Brunswick. (2025). Media. Electronic Products Recycling Association. https://recyclemyelectronics.ca/nb/media

That Metal Guy. (2024, December 23). What happens to electronics after recycling? https://thatmetalguy.ca/what-happens-to-electronics-after-recycling/

Nur Dursun, H., Üçerler, Z., Dinç, N. İ., Burat, F., & Ulusoy, U. (2024). Shape characterization of copper metallic particles recovered from jig separation of e-wastes. Academia Engineering, 1. https://doi.org/10.20935/AcadEng7368

York R. Smith, James R. Nagel, Raj K. Rajamani, Eddy current separation for recovery of non-ferrous metallic particles: A comprehensive review, Minerals Engineering, Volume 133, 2019, Pages 149-159, ISSN 0892-6875, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mineng.2018.12.025.

Separating ferrous and non-ferrous fines in metal recycling: Methods, challenges. (2025, October 14). OKON Recycling. Retrieved from https://www.okonrecycling.com/industrial-scrap-metal-recycling/steel-and-aluminum/ferrous-non-ferrous-fines-metal-recycling/

Habib, K., Mohammadi, E., & Vihanga Withanage, S. (2023). A first comprehensive estimate of electronic waste in Canada. Journal of hazardous materials, 448, 130865. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2023.130865

Recycle NB. (2024). Annual report 2024: Electronics stewardship program (pp. 14–15). Government of New Brunswick. https://www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Gateways/ABCs/Annual-reports1/2024-2025/ELG-RNB-2024-2025-annual-report-E.pdf

Ozone-depleting Substances and Halocarbon Alternatives Regulations, SOR/2016-137. (as amended by SOR/2017-216). Government of Canada. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-2016-137/FullText.html

Glencore Canada. (n.d.). Recycling https://www.glencore.ca/en/what-we-do/recycling

Umicore. (n.d.). Precious metal refining. https://www.umicore.com/en/about/recycling/precious-metals-refining/start/

Umicore. (n.d.). E-scrap. https://www.umicore.com/en/markets-products/recycling-solutions/precious-metals/e-scrap/

Cui, J., & Forssberg, E. (2003). Mechanical recycling of waste electric and electronic equipment: A review. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 99(3), 243–263. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-3894(03)00061-X

Johnson, J., Harper, E. M., Lifset, R., & Graedel, T. E. (2007). Dining at the periodic table: metals concentrations as they relate to recycling. Environmental science & technology, 41(5), 1759–1765. https://doi.org/10.1021/es060736h