Sean Mabberley stands in front of recyclable plastic that will be sorted, ground, and mixed with wood waste to create fuel for use by heavy industry. (CBC)

The plastic containers that Lower Mainland residents put in their blue boxes may end up being burned for fuel rather than recycled, CBC News has learned.

The global economic crisis has pushed the price of plastic so low, recyclers are now paying per tonne to have someone take it off their hands.

At least one Metro Vancouver recycling company has started combining the plastic yogurt tubs and milk jugs with wood waste to create fuel.

Sean Mabberley's company, Urban Wood Waste, is mixing about 10 tonnes of plastic products each day with wood from demolition sites to make a fuel for heavy industry.

"On a good day, like when the commodity prices were really high, this will be made directly back into #1 plastics. So your plastic toys coming out of China will be made from milk jugs," Mabberley explained. "On a day like today, this plastic, when there's no commodity market, will go into processed engineered fuel, and will directly replace the burning of coal."

Mabberley said that at the peak of the plastics market, high-grade material like the HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) plastic used in milk jugs could fetch $1,300 per tonne. Now, recyclers are paying him $45 per tonne to take it away.

The fuel, containing between four and 20 per cent plastic, is burned to create energy at industrial plants such as the Lafarge cement plant in Richmond and the Howe Sound Pulp and Paper mill on the Sunshine Coast.

Mabberley said Urban Wood Waste had been using plastic from construction materials in its fuel mixture before commodity prices fell, but only started using recyclables in the past two months.

Still a green solution?

Mabberley argues that even though the plastic is not being recycled into new products, using it for fuel is still environmentally friendly, because it's decreasing the need for fossil fuels such as coal.

"Instead of mining and burning coal and dumping all the CO2 emissions into the air, we're reusing a plastic," he said.

But plastic is made from oil, so it still produces greenhouse gas emissions when burned.

Helen Spiegelman, the co-ordinator of Zero Waste Vancouver, is critical of the practice, and other projects to make energy from waste.

"The last thing that we should be burning right now on this planet is fossil-based carbon," she said, adding that most plastic packaging "shouldn't have been produced in the first place."

Spiegelman is concerned that using plastic for fuel will remove the motivation for producers and consumers to reduce plastic packaging.

"By burning it and calling it a fuel, we're essentially creating a demand for garbage," she said.

Spiegelman said that putting used plastic in a landfill would be a better alternative to burning it for fuel.