Our story · Lacombe, Alberta
In One Door as Garbage. Out the Other as Lumber.
Thirty-one years hauling other people's hardest plastic. Six years turning it into something worth buying.
Where the name came from
Grey Is What Mixed Plastic Becomes
Blend enough different colours of HDPE together and you do not get red, or blue, or brown. You get grey.
That is not a marketing idea. It is what comes out of the machine. The colour of the board is the proof of what went into it: a pail that was white, a container that was black, a bin that was blue, all of it mixed and melted until the only honest description left is grey.
So the name is a statement of fact before it is anything else. Grey is what recycling actually looks like when nobody has dyed it back to something prettier. And grey, in this case, is green.
Thirty-one years
We Spent Three Decades Hauling the Stuff Nobody Wanted
The business started as a collection and drop-off trucking company. Our trucks picked up used oil containers across Alberta, collected under the province's stewardship programmes, and hauled them to processors somewhere else.
Used oil containers are among the hardest plastics in the country to recycle. They come back dirty, mixed, and contaminated with the thing they were built to hold. Because the material was treated as garbage, it sold like garbage: no negotiating room, no leverage, and a price set by whoever was willing to take it off our hands.
Six years ago we stopped selling it.
Instead of hauling the material to somebody else's processor, we built our own. Today the trucks still collect across Alberta, but the material comes back to Lacombe, where it is sorted, ground and extruded into dimensional lumber under our own roof. Travis puts it more plainly than we could: in one door as garbage, out another as a finished product.
We collect it
Our own trucks, across Alberta, under the regulated provincial programmes.
We process it
Sorted and ground at our own facility in Lacombe. No middleman, no shipping it away.
We make it
Extruded into solid dimensional board, sold as lumber and as finished products.
Vertically integrated, start to finish
Most recyclers hand the material on. Most manufacturers buy it in. We do both ends ourselves, which is why we can tell you exactly where the plastic in your order came from and issue a diversion statement that means something.
It also means the supply does not stop because somebody else's contract ended.
What goes in
Four Streams Nobody Else Wants to Handle
We are not limited to one clean feedstock. The material that gives other recyclers trouble is the material our line was built around.
- Used oil containers
- The hardest of the lot, and where the business started. Recovered through Alberta Recycling's programmes.
- Paint pails
- Collected through Alberta's paint recycling programme: dirty, mixed colours, low value to anyone else.
- Rolling garbage bins
- Household wheelie bins at the end of their service life, which is a great deal of plastic per unit.
- Beer can holders
- PakTech carriers from a local brewery. Small stream, but it is on our doorstep and it is genuinely hard to place elsewhere.
Recognition
Judge's Choice, Alberta Emerald Awards 2026
At the 35th Annual Alberta Emerald Awards in Calgary, Eco Column received the Judge's Choice Award, given jointly to Grey is Green and our sister company Premium Built Structures for turning hard-to-recycle plastic into post-frame building foundations.
Judge's Choice sits outside the standard categories. It is not a category we entered and won. It is an award the judges chose to create for the project. The Emerald Foundation has recognised more than 400 recipients since 1992; other recipients in 2026 included Dow Canada and the City of Edmonton.
Read the citation on the Emerald Foundation site.
About Eco ColumnLumber for Learning
We run a programme with Dow supplying plastic lumber to high school shop classes, so students build with the material directly rather than reading about recycling in a textbook.
It is a small thing next to the tonnage, but it is the part of the job that tends to come up at the dinner table.
Where we are going
By the end of 2026 we expect to be the downstream buyer for other collectors in Alberta, taking in material from people who are currently in the position we were in for thirty-one years, with nowhere good to send it.
Where to find us
Two Yards, Two Provinces
No other recycled plastic lumber supplier operates in both Alberta and Ontario.
Alberta
Lacombe
Collection, processing, extrusion and sales. This is where the material becomes lumber.
- Address
- 5618 Wolf Creek Drive
Lacombe, AB T4L 2H2 - Phone
- 403 391 2355
- Serving
- Red Deer, Calgary, Edmonton and central Alberta
Ontario
Georgina
Sales and supply for Ontario, on the south shore of Lake Simcoe.
- Serving
- York Region, Lake Simcoe, Barrie and the GTA
Come and See the Material
Ask for a sample, send us a project, or just call and ask how it is made. We are the people who make it.