Multi-Material British Columbia (MMBC) What is it?

Multi-Material British Columbia (MMBC) is an industry led and funded non-profit organization that will assume responsibility for managing residential packaging and printed paper on behalf of industry.

Through recent provincial legislation, BC is transitioning the responsibility of recycling packaging and printed paper from local governments to the businesses and producers that supply the product—something known as EPR or Extended Producer Responsibility. This means that businesses that supply packaging and printed paper to the consumer are responsible for collecting it, diverting it from landfills and recycling it.

Starting May 19, 2014, MMBC , on behalf of the business community, will take responsibility for (be paying for) curbside, multi-family building and depot recycling of printed paper and packaging and will then be invoicing BC businesses to cover these costs.

Are you impacted?

If your organization or company is a retailer, restaurant, importer, manufacturer, distributor or wholesaler that supplies packaging, or an organization such as an insurance company or bank that supplies printed paper (e.g. statements) to BC residents, then you are considered a “steward” and are required to join MMBC and support the recycling program.

This comprehensive Guidebook for Businesses is available for download and outlines all of the details surrounding the MMBC program, details whether businesses are required to join MMBC and explains how they can meet their recycling obligations in British Columbia.

Steward
What’s Included?

To be included in these regulations, the packaging and printed paper must be supplied to the end consumer. That means packaging and paper supplied via a business-to-business transaction or through commercial activities is in most cases not included in these regulations.

Packaging can include anything that is given to the end consumer such as:

Packaging also means all sorts of service packaging that is added afterwards by a business when providing a product to a customer.

This may include:

In regards to printed paper, this includes any paper that is not packaging, but is printed with text or graphics as a medium for communicating information, such as:

Recent Changes:

Small Business Policy

Through advocacy efforts of groups like the BBOT, MMBC has decided to create a Small Business Policy that will exempt certain business from some of the costs and reporting obligations mentioned above.

The proposed policy would exempt business that meet ANY of the following criteria:
a) Generate less than $1 million in gross revenues
b) Contribute less than 1 ton of printed paper and packing to consumers
c) Operates as a single point of retail sale and is not supplied by or operated as part of a franchise, a
chain or under a banner

Businesses that meet any of these criteria would still have to become MMBC members, but would not have to monitor and count their paper /packaging and would not have to submit a detailed report to MMBC, saving staff time and money. These businesses would still have to pay an admin fee of $150 each year, something that the BBOT remains concerned with.

Low Volume Policy

MMBC is also proposing a Low Volume Policy consisting of flat fees and a simple online reporting process for businesses that contribute more than 1 ton of paper/packaging but less than 5 tons.

Business that fall into this category will use an online calculator to add-up and report the amount of packaging and printed paper they distributed.

MMBC is proposing two flat-fee levels for the approximately 2000-3000 businesses that would not be exempted by the above policy:

a) For printed paper and packaging of between 1.0 and 2.5 tons, a flat-fee of $550 would be imposed.
b) For printed paper and packaging of between 2.5 and 5.0 tons, a flat-fee of $1200 would be imposed.

Contact Info
For up-to-date information on MMBC, visit their website at www.multimaterialbc.ca

Multi-Material BC
209-1730 West 2nd Avenue
Vancouver, BC
V6J 1H6

Service Provider inquiry: (604) 620 7540

Steward inquiry: 1-888-980-9549​

General inquiry: info@multimaterialbc.ca
Stakeholders stakeholders@multimaterialbc.ca
Stewards stewards@multimaterialbc.ca
Comments info@multimaterialbc.ca
Website webmaster@multimaterialbc.ca