The Recycling Council of BC (RCBC), a respected voice in waste management in this province for almost 40 years, has issued an important paper about "Waste-to-Energy."
The paper examines the claims of Plasco Energy Group in its proposal for a 400 tonne-per-day facility in Port Moody.
Its findings affirm the concerns that caused Port Moody council to reject Plasco's proposal earlier this month.
But the paper emphasizes that the report is "neither a statement against or in favour of Plasco Energy Group's proposal."
It is rather an indictment of Waste-to-Energy as a waste management option.
The introduction states that that "RCBC recently reaffirmed its position against using WTE as part of the waste-management regime in B.C.
"It is RCBC's position that the use of WTE does nothing to encourage waste reduction, and that WTE would in fact be quite unnecessary if full extended producer responsibility programs (product stewardship) and full organics diversion were in place."
The conclusion states: "With the funds required for Metro Vancouver to build and operate new WTE facilities, a host of ground-breaking Zero Waste initiatives could instead be introduced. These initiatives would ensure that the region's annual disposal rate does not exceed one million tonnes and would have the eventual goal of negating the need to landfill at all."
This paper is a major contribution to a growing number of papers being produced in the public interest that support a Zero Waste planning approach, rather than traditional waste disposal-focused waste solutions.
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