At the last meeting of the Metro Vancouver Waste Management Committee, Vancouver Councillor Peter Ladner was incredulous. Here's how the discussion went:
LADNER: I am interested in the financial projection of the household impacts. I read in the middle of this report that there will be $446 million being spent on waste-to-energy by 2017. Are we saying that we will be hit with a half-billion dollar expense?
TOIVO ALLAS (staff): there will be full discussion by the board of each expenditure as we go along…
But once we issue the Request for Proposals "early in 2008" we will be headed down the road towards that half-billion expense. Shouldn't we be talking about the expenses now, rather than after the RFP is issued?
Why is MetroVancouver willing to earmark half a billion dollars for unproven waste-to-energy technology, when they won't spend any money at all on composting - a technology that local municipalities say they want, and which is an unfulfilled promise from the 1995 Solid Waste Management Plan?
3 comments:
Composting is 40% of municipal solid waste!!! and won't produce nearly the greenhouse gas than if it is buried in the ground..I would be happy to have my compost picked up at the curb..end product used for flower beds and nieghbourhood garden projects!
Who runs this blog? Is this paid for by Wastech?
Wastech?
You must be drawing an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" inference! Indeed, Wastech is threatened by incinerator proposals because they've put their money on landfills.
Zero Waste Vancouver, on the other hand, is determined to slay both dragons. Right now *fire* is the more urgent threat. Political leaders in our region have already begun to seriously question the wisdom of trucking garbage to remote landfills, but they are at risk of being been swayed by the alse promises of the incinerator salesmen.
(To give Wastech credit: they were the Deep Pockets behind the failed composting plant in Squamish ~ and they are rumored to own the Canadian rights to the Gore Cover composting system that is being trialed at the Vancouver Landfill... they may have figured out which way the wind blows!)
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