Saskatchewan Waste Reduction Council

Announcing this year's SK Waste Reduction Award winners!

The SWRC is delighted to recognize these six groups that went above and beyond to cut out trash in 2025 by reducing, re-using, repairing, and recycling.

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2025 WINNERS

🏆Municipality ~ Town of Maple Creek, Saskatchewan for their impressive recycling and organics diversion programs, including their FoodCycler pilot project.

🏆Municipality ~ Resort Village of Candle Lake for their commitment to waste reduction, recycling, and diversion programs in a small community that hosts a massive seasonal population of visitors.

🏆Non-profit Organization ~ The Salvation Army Thrift Store - Canada for diverting usable textiles, household goods, and appliances from the landfill - and finding trustworthy recycling partners for unsellable donations.

🏆Large Business ~ Ardent Mills. Through smart sorting, innovative upcycling, and a committed team, they cut their landfill waste by 44% in a single year!

🏆Small Business ~ RNF Ventures Ltd. for reaching a whopping 97% diversion rate of CRD waste during the Pine Grove Correctional Centre upgrade project.

🏆Partnership ~ Federated Co-operatives Limited, Vereco Consulting and Design, Voce Developments Corp, and Heritage Timber Products (heritage-timber.com) for the Gateway Co-op construction project.
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this week as we highlight each winner in turn!

And a HUGE thank you to our Award Sponsor, SaskTel, for making these awards possible.

June 21st was National Indigenous People’s Day, a day to honour our First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities – and to strengthen the relationship between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous people of Canada.

This year, SWRC was grateful to have the chance to volunteer at the Rock Your Roots event in Saskatoon. It was amazing to see the massive crowd come out, and painful but so meaningful to hear the personal stories of many elders and residential school survivors.

As a non-profit organization serving SK, the SWRC working on building relationships with more First Nation and Métis communities around the province, to know more and to be a better advocate and waste management resource. Thank you for the chance to learn and grow.

After touring the Saskatoon landfill and LORAAS organics facility, Naomi came away with one clear takeaway: we still have a plastic film problem. 🥲♻🗑🥲

Plastic bags and packaging were visible everywhere at the sites—from landfill fencing to compost piles. Yet for the first time, Saskatchewan residents DO have a practical way to recycle these materials (through the SK Recycles program at SARCANs).

Explore why plastic film has been such a challenge, what can now be recycled, and how one simple collection bag at home can significantly reduce household waste.

Read the full blog at: www.swrc.ca/the-bag-in-the-bag-saskatchewan-households-and-plastic-film-recycling/

The numbers are in from our spring repair cafés - thank you to all the volunteers from North Battleford, Estevan, and Weyburn that make these events a big success!

Across the 3 cities, we saw 83 items come in.
✅ 52 items got fixed then-and-there, for free.
📌 19 items weren't fixable on the spot, but volunteers advised where to go next.
☠ 12 items were toast.

For most popular kind of mending, it was a tie between 👚clothing/textiles and 🔌small appliances.

Has your community hosted a repair café yet - or are you interested? Let us know!