Garbage management becomes burning issue in Metro Vancouver

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      Opponents of incineration should expect a long, hard campaign this fall.

      No less than the chair of Metro Vancouver’s waste-management committee is saying that waste-to-energy, including incineration, is the way to go in dealing with the region’s garbage.

      Surrey councillor Marvin Hunt made the comment as his committee was scheduled to receive, on September 17, a staff report that will lay out a new waste-management plan for the Lower Mainland. According to a consulting firm’s report earlier commissioned by Metro Vancouver, a medium-size incinerator with a capacity of 500,000 tonnes per year will cost $470 million.

      “From the research that we have done in the last year-and-a-half, we’re certainly seeing that waste-to-energy looks like the future of where we should be going,” Hunt told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview. “We certainly have looked at what Europe is doing”¦what’s happening in Asia, throughout the rest of North America, and it certainly seems as though the technical world is moving into waste-to-energy because it’s a much better way.”

      According to Hunt, his committee will refer the plan for public consultations this October, with the objective of having Metro Vancouver’s board approve it by November.

      The regional body has set an ambitious target of increasing recycling from the current rate of 55 percent to 70 percent by 2015.

      But even if this target is reached, the remaining 30 percent, representing 1.1 million tonnes, still needs to be disposed of. This volume is expected to increase to 1.2 million tonnes by 2020.

      In the throne speech delivered by Lt.-Gov. Steven Point on August 25, the province made clear that it will not allow the export of B.C.’s waste. Metro Vancouver had earlier proposed moving the region’s waste by truck and train to the U.S.

      In what environmentalist Elaine Golds described as a push for burning garbage, the regional body invited foreign resource speakers identified with the incineration industry to a series of forums on waste management in the two days before Hunt’s committee is scheduled to meet.

      “It’s very clear that that’s the direction where they are going,” Golds, conservation chair of the Burke Mountain Naturalists, told the Straight.

      Golds was referring to U.K.-based Jim Bridges, a retired professor of toxicology and environmental health, and Bettina Kamuk of Denmark. According to a flyer issued by a newly formed coalition, Zero Waste B.C., Bridges has worked with, among others, a company whose clients include the firm that operates Metro Vancouver’s incinerator in Burnaby. Kamuk, for her part, was referred to as an incinerator-industry lobbyist.

      Also invited as speaker in the forums was Konrad Fichtner of AECOM Canada Ltd., the consulting firm that submitted a report to Metro Vancouver in June this year about waste-management options.

      AECOM’s report presents eight options, three of which included incinerators. One involves building a huge incinerator with an annual capacity of 750,000 tonnes. Under this scenario, the remainder of the region’s waste would be disposed of through the Burnaby incinerator and the City of Vancouver–operated landfill in Delta.

      However, Golds noted, incineration will undermine efforts to enhance recycling and composting.

      Golds cited a recent study by Washington state–based Jeffrey Morris of the Sound Resource Management group as a possible guide in coming up with a waste-management plan. In his paper, Morris suggests that Metro Vancouver increase its waste-diversion target to 80 percent over a 20-year period.

      Morris writes that through composting and recycling, the region can more than double the volume of greenhouse gases that it prevents from being released into the atmosphere, from 1.9 million tonnes in 2008 to 4.3 million tonnes in 2029. He explains that the reduction of 1.9 million tonnes in GHG emissions last year was equivalent to taking about 500,000 vehicles off the roads.

      Morris’s study was commissioned by Belkorp Environmental Services Inc., the parent company of Wastech Services Ltd., which runs the Cache Creek landfill. This facility takes the Metro Vancouver garbage that is not disposed of through the Burnaby incinerator and the Delta landfill.

      Located 350 kilometres north of Vancouver, the Cache Creek landfill was supposed to reach full capacity by the end of 2010. However, on August 31 this year, Wastech announced that the provincial government approved its application for a new seven-hectare annex, thereby extending the life of the landfill up to the end of 2012.

      Comments

      5 Comments

      common tater

      Sep 18, 2009 at 2:04pm

      How about the offer to do it for free without polluting the air, water or land, It would be self-powered and generating electricity emissions free. http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.html?id=152b5f0d-662e-4960-90e6... My apologies for the source of this link, what to do about the media monopoly. http://www.plascoenergygroup.com/ They are operating in Ottawa proceeding in Red deer, Spain, Japan, California and the Bahamas and they're Canadian.

      smarter tater

      Sep 18, 2009 at 6:15pm

      Nothing comes for free -do some research and you will see the Plasco project in Ottawa has never been able to run for a consecutive period of time using regular garbage. They have also had to shut down due to high emissions. However as Paul Connett says, even if you could burn the materials safely, it would never be a smart solutions. The items in the waste that have the highest energy value are plastics (a fossil fuel), paper (should be recycled to save more energy) and organics (needed for compost to improve soil quality).

      Radazak

      Sep 19, 2009 at 3:01pm

      There are so many holes in this article. Which of the 8 scenarios does Metro Vancouver put forward? What percentage of waste is to go in the incinerator and of what type is it? What is the ultimate diversion goal, not just the 70% by 2016 initial goal? How would incinerating a percentage of the waste inhibit composting and recycling? What are the comparative costs of the incinerator and any other option being put forward?

      And wtf is a conservative chair? Likely should be "conservation chair."

      Charlie Smith

      Sep 19, 2009 at 5:38pm

      Radazak,
      Thanks for pointing out the incorrect use of "conservative". I changed it to "conservation" in the text.
      Charlie Smith

      Data Shredding Services

      Dec 6, 2010 at 2:06am

      In our own simple ways, we can manage the bulk of trash being collected in our homes or workplace by being practical. For those items that we can still reuse or recycle, let us not throw them in the bin right away. Being wasteful is one of the reasons why we are now struggling to manage our garbage. If we have used papers, instead of throwing them in the trash - we can have them shredded to be used as filling for our packages or pet bedding. We can even protect ourselves from fraudulent people since our personal files cannot be read anymore once they are properly disposed of.