Melfort's SARCAN Depot re-opened to the public on Tuesday. (Mat Barrett/northeastNOW Staff)

By Mat Barrett

SARCAN Re-opening

SARCAN in Melfort re-opened on Tuesday

Jun 16, 2020 | 4:00 PM

Has quarantine created a larger than normal collection of bottles and cans around your house?

Luckily, as of Tuesday the Melfort SARCAN Depot is officially open to the public, with a number of restrictions in place.

For those who may be coming to get their refund on recyclables, there’s a few things to know before coming in. Firstly, customers are only allowed to bring in one trip of bags to the depot to limit on some lengthier transactions. On top of that, only three customers are going to be allowed into the depot at one time according to Depot Supervisor John Barks.

“I’ve got two people in line in front of their door,” he said. “And then when everyone else arrives, I take a description of their vehicle and their license plate number, write it down, and when it’s their turn to get in line, I go get them and get them to come in line.”

Meanwhile, Plexiglass barriers have been put up to separate the customers from the employees at the depot, and Barks said they are only going to have one employee taking bottles per station to follow the social distancing requirements.

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Barks added the measures put in place do help them feel safer while working.

“We’re really proud of the way that SARCAN has developed everything,” he said. “And how things are going.”

While normally, SARCAN could use two employees at one station to allow things to go quicker, that won’t be the case, but it doesn’t mean SARCAN doesn’t have work for their employees. Barks said they’ve even had to hire on a few more people to make sure things go smoothly.

Meanwhile, as for traffic on day one, it’s been busy from the get go.

“I had customers lining up at [8:40 a.m.] this morning, and we open up at 9:30 a.m.,” Barks told northeastNOW. “And I expect it’s going to be like that all week.”

The parking lot of SARCAN was almost completely full on Tuesday afternoon. (Mat Barrett/nrotheastNOW Staff)

SARCAN in Melfort is open Tuesday to Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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mat.barrett@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @matbarrett6