Why the silence on composting?

Way back in November 2007 Metro politicians insisted that a line-item be added to the 2008 budget to get composting going... but here it is, half-way through 2009 and we still don't have any service for composting our food waste.

And it looks like another month will go by without the politicians hearing an update from Metro staff on the development of the program.

The agenda for Wednesday's meeting has not a word on composting. Instead, politicians will learn in the Manager's report that the public won't get a chance to weigh in on Metro's incineration plans until next September.

Rumours have it that the municipal engineers in the region are turning out to be as skeptical of Metro's reasoning about so-called "waste-to-energy" as the public is. The Regional Engineers Advisory Committee apparently got a look at a long-awaited Metro report that compared the effects of landfilling and incineration (guess what the conclusion was!) and were not impressed. I'm told the engineers scoffed at both the report's methodology and its findings.

Meanwhile down at Vancouver's landfill on Saturday, busloads of families were touring the city's landfill. They saw dozens of majestic Bald Eagles dodging the bulldozers, along with hundreds of gulls, trying to get at the rotting food on the pile.

Zero Waste Vancouver was there promoting the COOL 2012 campaign to keep Compostable Organics Out of Landfills.

Why are we creating an attractive nuisance that threatens wildlife, when we could be feeding the soil in the Fraser Valley? Vancouver pays falconers to scare away the eagles and gulls. Wouldn't it make more sense just not to put out the bait in the first place?