The brand-new fleece jacket you buy to shut out the autumn chill might well have passed through the hands of Yukon consumers before. Much of the synthetic fleece clothing on the market today is made from recycled plastic pop bottles.

That's just one of the ways that recycled materials return to the Yukon, says Dawn Lammer, education coordinator with Raven Recycling in Whitehorse. The non-profit society processes recyclable materials from most of the territory.

Raven packs up plastic pop bottles at its collection centre in Whitehorse and ships them to a plant in Alberta. There, they are shredded and processed into pellets of plastic for sale to the fibre industry.

Plastic milk jugs get much the same treatment, although they're made from a different kind of plastic. The pellets made from milk jugs might be turned into backing for carpets or the fibre that fills synthetic pillows.

Plastic has to be reused as something unrelated to food and drink, Lammer says. "They can't make new containers out of the plastic for health and safety reasons," she explains. "Glass is inert, so even if you've stored a hazardous substance in it, you can wash it really well and it would be fine. But because plastic's quite porous, there's always some kind of interaction."

Although glass is reusable, it has the disadvantage of being heavy. Raven used to ship glass to Vancouver, where it was melted down and made into new bottles and jars, but the shipping was too expensive.

Now the glass is crushed at the recycling centre and sent to Skookum Construction in Whitehorse. The construction company plans to grind it down to the consistency of sand for use in building roadbeds.

In addition, Raven Recycling has applied for money to buy a glass pulverizer, which would grind the glass into coarse sand, useful for drainage and other types of construction.

The empty tin can you take to the recycling centre might well come back as the same kind of container, but it will have undergone a major transformation between visits.

"Tin" cans are really steel cans with a thin coating of tin, Lammer explains. Raven ships them to a plant in Alberta where the tin and steel are separated. The tin is generally reused in the manufacture of cans, but the steel has many uses.

"Steel's one of those materials that can be recycled into just about anything, so it could come back as another tin can or it could come back as an engine part, or your hammer head, anything," says Lammer.

The recycling of aluminum cans is simpler. Raven sells them to the aluminum company, Alcan, where they are melted down and turned into new aluminum cans.

Some kinds of paper follow an equally simple path. White writing paper can be recycled up to 12 times. Coloured paper, including sticky notes, white envelopes and thermal fax paper, can be recycled about 10 times.

"When we recycle paper, what we're trying to do is recover the fibres. The longer the fibre is, the more times it can be recycled," Lammer explains. The washing process needed to recycle coloured paper breaks the fibres and reduces the number of times they can be reused. White paper, which usually has the longest fibres, can be sold to recyclers for almost twice the price of coloured paper.

Other kinds of paper also tend to come back in much the same form after recycling. Newspapers come back as newsprint. Corrugated cardboard, brown paper bags, and brown envelopes generally come back as cardboard.

The exception is glossy magazines and flyers. The gloss on the paper is a coating of clay that must be removed before the paper can be recycled. The extra level of processing shortens the fibres so that they're usually good only for tissue and toilet paper.

Other materials go through less dramatic changes. Used motor oil goes to Mohawk Oil, where it's re-refined and used again. Car and marine batteries go to recyclers in Alberta and British Columbia, where the acids, lead, and plastic are recovered and re-used. Copper, brass, aluminum, and other metals go to a scrap metal dealer in British Columbia.

Raven Recycling began operating in 1989, and has steadily increased the amount of material that it diverts from Yukon landfills. In the 1995-96 fiscal year, the total reached 935 tonnes. A City of Whitehorse study estimates that up to three quarters of household solid waste is recyclable or reusable, so that figure could increase even further in the future.

For further information about recycling, contact the Raven Recycling Society in Whitehorse or see the Yukon State of the Environment Report, available from Environment Canada, Whitehorse. (Visit the World Wide Web version of the Yukon State of the Environment Report.)