Vancouver's garbage: dumps full, recycling not enough Special

That population generates 3.5 million tonnes of garbage per year, about 55 percent of which is recycled, the audience heard. Most of the remainder is trucked to a landfill in Cache Creek, about 350 km into BC's interior. That dump is nearing capacity and is likely to close within 18 months. But landfill is a misnomer, said panelist Andrew Weaver. "Landfill is when you dig up your backyard and fill it up [again]. These are not landfills, they're garbage dumps." Weaver holds the Canada Research Chair for Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria, and represents the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). A participant added that waste management is another misnomer and suggested "resource management" instead. She noted that in the small community of Sherwood Park, north of Edmonton, Alberta, all but 11% of waste is being recycled. Resource management implies something of value rather than something worthless, she said. In an evening of often heated discussion, the main point of consensus was that the focus of public education and legislation to enforce corporate responsibility should be on reducing and reusing first, and then recycling, recovery, and residuals. The discussions are part of Metro Vancouver's efforts to promote its Zero Waste Challenge, the goal of which is to increase waste diversion in the region to 70% by 2015. The Zero Waste strategy is multi-faceted, including increased municipal composting, recycling, and waste-to-energy (WTE) projects. Increasing municipal composting is like picking "low-hanging fruit," said Weaver. It's not difficult to transition to combining kitchen scraps -- leftover meat and fat -- with vegetable and yard waste. "The regional district of Nanaimo will hit 75% waste diversion next year and a lot of that is from organics." Aerobic (oxygen-fed) composting of organics emits significantly less methane (more toxic than carbon dioxide) than anaerobic disposal of the same waste in garbage dumps. Several Metro Vancouver municipalities are transitioning to full organic composting within the year. Much more waste could be recycled, and product manufacturers should be legislated to take responsibility for that, said Brock MacDonald, executive director of the Recycling Council of BC. "Take shingles," he said. "You have a shingled roof, you take off the shingles and throw them away. But what if we had EPR [extended producer responsibility] on shingles?" Shingles are not far from being recyclable, and the companies that manufacture them should be responsible for that, he said. Recycling creates six jobs for every one job eliminated at a garbage dump, so it also contributes to economic development. Waste-to-energy facilities capture energy from garbage decomposition through burning or other processes. WTE facilities can produce about 75 mega watts of electricity from 750,000 tonnes per year of waste -- enough energy for 75,000 homes. Metro Vancouver's current incinerator in Burnaby handles about 200,000 tonnes per year, or 30% of the waste generated in the region, and a proposal is on the table to build another one. However, said Helen Spiegelman of the volunteer-run non-profit Zero Waste Vancouver, studies show that if the existing landfills and incinerator along with composting of organic waste were managed well, they would have the capacity to last well into the future. "It would be nuts to spend $3 billion on another incinerator," she said. Manufacturing products with the intent of recycling needs to be handled on the design table, said a participant. But even increased recycling will not be enough. The population is growing in Metro Vancouver, a region that is bordered on all sides by ocean, mountains, and the Canada/US boundary. According to the website: "Although we recycle more than we ever did, our increasing population means we are challenged to even maintain our current 55% solid waste diversion rate.... As long as total waste generation climbs in parallel with recycling volumes, we will not make progress toward Zero Waste -- the amount of waste we generate in the first place must come down." Aside from legislation to enforce corporate EPR, a participant asked, how will "the busy public" be educated and motivated to understand the problems and what needs to be done to address them. How much of the Metro Vancouver budget is going to waste-to-energy consultants and how much is going into public education so that voters will ultimately give legislators the "kick in the butt" they need to find the political will to implement and enforce change. In Sweden, said Peter Busby, an architect whose firm built the environmentally ground-breaking Dockside Green in Victoria, "I saw an environmentally driven population. It's at the core of their being. They have invested in sophisticated infrastructure that has achieved incredibly low rates of dioxin release ... over 25 years." What would it take for Metro Vancouver to get there? The second "Solid Waste: Options for the Region" took place in Langley on November 19. On November 20, the sessions continue over breakfast at the Wosk Centre for Dialogue in Vancouver, and early afternoon at Hollyburn Country Club in West Vancouver. Presenters include Len Laycock, president of Upholstery Arts, Brock MacDonald, executive director of Recycling Council of BC, Paul Gilman, senior VP and chief sustainability officer at Covanta Energy, Tony Sperling, president and landfill design specialist at Sperling Hansen Associates, and Andrew Weaver, Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria.