As farmers continue to look for ways to be more sustainable, Lacombe County is working to help by launching a trial agriculture plastic's recycling program this year.

As Agricultural Fieldman Dion Burlock explains they'll be starting by collecting plastic grain bags.

“There is an issue with other types of plastics out there but at the moment there isn’t recyclers set up to utilize that and there is no commercial market so we’re going to initially start our program collecting grain bags from producers and then hopefully you know in the future there will be other types of recyclers out there that we can get some other plastics going that way”.

There currently are only markets for recycling grain bags and pesticide jugs.

Burlock explains what's done with the bags once they are delivered to a facility near Bassano.

“The bags themselves get shredded and then put through an extruder process and they’re turned into a plastic pellet which then gets recycled to make other plastic products”.

Lacombe County is looking at partnering with Ponoka and Red Deer Counties for the pilot project this year.