ECCO was founded in Calgary in 1992 and began operating at the site in the 1990s. For more than three decades, the company has formed part of the waste-management and recycling system serving Calgary and the surrounding region.
Before material reaches ECCO, it comes from activities occurring throughout the city: new-home construction, renovations, commercial development, demolition projects and recycling operations. ECCO’s role has been to receive that material, separate recoverable products and reduce the amount requiring final disposal.
The 2023 application materials reported that ECCO had processed approximately 200,000 tonnes of material annually and approximately 4.5 million tonnes over the life of the operation.
ECCO has also provided local employment, services to builders and contractors, access to recycling services for residents and businesses, and support for community organizations and initiatives.
ECCO’s materials-recovery work supports objectives the City of Calgary has established for reducing waste and recovering usable resources. Calgary’s Municipal Development Plan identifies waste reduction and improved resource recovery as a city-wide objective and states that Calgary aims to move toward zero waste through reduction, reuse, recycling and composting. The Plan specifically recognizes that construction and demolition activities generate a significant portion of the material disposed in landfills, even though materials such as untreated wood, concrete, asphalt, drywall, metal and cardboard can be recovered or recycled.
It describes construction and demolition waste diversion as a collaborative effort between the City and the private sector and directs that recyclable material from these activities be responsibly diverted. By sorting mixed construction and demolition loads and recovering usable material before the remainder is disposed of, ECCO provides the type of private-sector processing capacity required to put these policies into practice.
Recovering and reusing material also aligns with the City’s Waste Diversion Strategy and the Calgary Climate Strategy – Pathways to 2050. The Climate Strategy commits Calgary to progress toward net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050 and identifies collaboration with Calgary’s building and development industries as part of that work.
Recycling wood, metal, concrete, cardboard and other construction materials keeps those resources in use, reduces demand for landfill capacity and supports a more circular economy. Processing suitable residual material into low-carbon fuel provides an additional recovery option for material that cannot readily be recycled into another product.
These activities do not eliminate the need for safe operations and effective oversight, but they serve waste-diversion, resource-recovery and emissions-reduction objectives already adopted by the City.