One sided panel criticized at Metro Forum

OK, Metro Vancouver CAO Johnny Carline is no longer pretending that he is open-minded about how we should manage waste in the region. He is reported in today's Vancouver Sun to be in "the burn-it camp."

But yesterday's news warned that he will face "a wall of public opposition" if he tries to move his agenda forward. And he got a taste of that at the first of Metro' sgarbage forums yesterday.

Metro was repeatedly critized for presenting a one sided panel. Here is some
background on the "experts" Metro flew in from Europe to speak at the forums and a Myth Busters reference sheet for deconstructing the experts' testimony.

These were being handed out by the new Zero Waste BC Network. A whole lot of new people are helping to build that wall of opposition.

The experts will face their fourth and final audience this noon in New Westminster.

Call for a Zero Waste Economy

Metro Vancouver has just wrapped up another round of sparsely attended public meetings about its so-called "Zero Waste Challenge." In this round, citizens were asked to pick a target for cutting our waste by 2015. The starting line, we were told, is 50%, which is how much we currently reduce our waste through existing recycling and composting programs. What were the targets proposed by Metro?

Continued Improvement would get us up to 60%.

Aggressive Change would be really hard and costly, but it could get us to 70%.

The third choice, A Zero Waste Economy, they warned us, would need not only all the cost and pain of Aggressive Change but also the unlikely scenario of provincial, federal and international leaders embracing fundamental changes in the way waste is managed.

Since the finish line of this race was set by Metro at 2015, the third choice seemed patently unrealistic. Nevertheless many in the room the night I attended were not deterred. In the straw vote held at the end of the evening, most participants chose targets higher than 70%.

Do you want a Zero Waste Economy? Go to the Zero Waste Challenge Feedback Form and tell Metro your views. Then send an email directly to the members of the Metro Waste Management Committee (see contact info in the right margin).

Next month, Metro will host a new round of consultations seeking our support for construction of huge new garbage incinerators. If we tell them we want a Zero Waste Economy, they won't need to build any incinerators.

Pic: this is the image Metro adapted for their PPT slide show.

Metro acknowledges "political uncertainty" of waste incineration

In a landmark decision yesterday, the new Metro Board pulled back from a plan being quietly carried out behind the scenes to buy land slated for the first of up to six waste incinerators in our region. They had no choice, after being presented with a last-minute report from the Commissioner acknowledging that they might run into trouble with both the public and the provincial government.

Carlito Pablo tells the story of this amazing turn-around in The Straight.

This is a huge and welcome victory for the citizens of Sapperton/McBride neighbourhoods in New Westminster, who packed a hall last summer to learn about the hazards of the facility that their Mayor was still denying was planned for the nearby Canfor industrial site. (Their Mayor voted with all but one of his fellow Directors to "reject" the expropriation.) Before making their decision yesterday, they were reminded by New West resident Joy Foy who is also national campaign director for the Wilderness Committee about the health and environmental hazards of incinerators.

It is also a victory for the citizens of Port Moody who turned out in large numbers through a long hot summer of public meetings about their Council's proposed Plasco gasification plant. Their C0uncil, to its credit, took the time to hear from the public and then acted promptly on what they heard. This is democracy in action.

It is also a victory for the citizens of the Fraser Valley who, led by Abbotsford Councillor Patricia Ross and many other candidates for public office in the Valley, that this plan would go the same way as the Sumas 2 proposal a few years back.

And it's also a victory for "a broader organized interest group within Metro Vancouver" (which will remain nameless!). Zero Waste Vancouver's candidate poll in the 08 civic elections showed overwhelming opposition to incinerators among the region's most civically engaged citizens ~ including many who now have seats at the Metro Board.

Citizens have the politicians' attention. Now it is up to us to show them a better way forward. We'll start by debunking the myth that our region is "running out of landfill space"...

But first Zero Waste Vancouver will participate in a meeting next week in Detroit where 100 anti-incineration from across North America will develop a common agenda for the transition from a Throw-Away Society to a Zero Waste Society.

Pic: Lawns to Gardens

Paul Connett to speak in New West too

Paul Connett will make a third appearance in the region this month, along with scheduled meetings in Abbotsford and Vancouver.

The McBride-Sapperton Residents' association has scheduled a community meeting in New Westminster to hear what Dr. Paul Connett has to say about waste incinerators. They invite the public to join them.

Tuesday, June 24

7:00 pm

Knox Church Hall

403 East Columbia

New Westminster

Let's talk about the downside of incineration

The Fraser Valley Regional District, the University of the Fraser Valley and Zero Waste Vancouver are organizing public meetings this month to call attention to the dangers of waste-to-energy incineration. We're bringing in a legendary figure to help us. (see details below)

Dr. Paul Connett, who helped citizens block hundreds of incineration plants during the 1980s, will be speaking in Abbotsford and Vancouver, as well as other meetings yet to be set up. Connett was the technical advisor in a North America-wide citizens' movement during the 1980s that blocked hundreds of proposed incineration plants and brought in curbside recycling instead.

We suspect that most citizens don't even know that Metro Vancouver intends to build up to six waste incinerators in our region. The publicity for Metro Vancouver's sparsely attended public meetings in April and May asked "How should we manage our waste?" but didn't mention the proposed incinerators.

Elected politicians in the region have not been trumpteting the incinerator plan either. Probably because they realize it won't be a great election issue. Saddling the public with $3 billion in debt, tripling disposal costs and seeking a site in someone's backyard may be tough for incumbents to sell next November when they're seeking new mandates.

To get the ball rolling, we'll offer any regional politician who is ready to take a stand on incinerators ~ for or against ~ an opportunity to be heard at the Vancouver public forum on June 25th. It's about time we had a debate on this important regional issue.

Vancouver meeting details (sponsor: ZWV)

Wednesday, June 25

7:00 pm

Coast Plaza Hotel

1763 Comox Street

Fraser Valley meeting details (sponsor: UFV)

Monday, June 23

7:00 pm

MCA Auditorium

32315 South Fraser Way

Pic: Paul Connett talk in Maryland in 2007

Globe columnist slams Ontario incinerator decision

The Globe's John Barber wrote a scathing Op-Ed today about convoluted logic that convinced politicians in the Durham region of Ontario that it was a "prudent" investment to saddle ratepayers with a waste solution (incinerator) that will cost $250/tonne ~ compared, for instance, with the solution chosen by Toronto (landfill) that will cost $70/tonne.

He comments: "Yesterday, a key Durham committee voted to accept the business case supporting the incinerator as the most "prudent" way to dispose of its waste for the next two generations. If regional council follows suit, its far-sighted members will prudently condemn their grandchildren to paying three times as much to dispose of their garbage as their neighbours do - using a technology that was unforgivably primitive even in 2008."

He reminds readers that there are alternatives ~ a "flood of new policies and technologies that promise virtually to eliminate the need for conventional disposal."

He might have been thinking of Extended Producer Responsibility (where BC is a leader). This policy promises to eliminate 75% of municipal waste by giving the problem back to producers.

He might have been thinking of the composting of biodegradable wastes, where Ontario is a leader. Together these policies add up to Zero Waste, or darned close. Never have we had such an opportunity to do away with waste as we know it.

But not for poor Durham, alas.

Barber writes: "Not only will the grandchildren be stuck paying for a hideous, polluting relic on the shores of their lake, they will pay through the absence of the public transit that everybody else will have built by then"

Let's not let it happen here. Metro Vancouver has already approved the authority to borrow a quarter of a billion dollars to build an incinerator here. They can't sign the deal until a new waste management plan is approved. Zero Waste Vancouver has prepared a position paper on the proposed plan. If your organization would like to read the paper and consider signing on, contact us by email: zerowastevancouver@gmail.com. We'd be happy to send a speaker to provide background on the issue.

Transit... or Gateway for Garbage. Our choice or theirs?

Pic: Durham Environment Watch

Ashcroft all over again?

On Saturday I spent a couple of hours at the Earth Day celebration at Jericho Park.

I spoke to several dozen people about the plan to build waste incinerators in our region. Not a single person had heard that Metro Vancouver was intending to do this.

Interestingly, two people had seen the ads for the public meetings about waste management, but they had not understood that the meetings were about a plan to build incinerators.

Some of the people I spoke to were worried about possible health impacts. More were worried, as I am, about the climate change effects from burning plastics that will emit CO2. Most of all, people wondered why we would be spending money to burn all those throw-away products that shouldn't be sold in the first place. What better way to lock in the Throw-Away Society?

In 2000, without any public discussion, the GVRD Board agreed to spend $4.5 million on Ashcroft Ranch. Another $5.5 million were subsequently spent trying to get approval for a 100-year landfill there.

That mistake will pale in comparison to the blunder we are about to commit with the staff's new so-called waste solution. The Metro Vancouver Board agreed on Friday to authorize a quarter of a billion dollars in new debt to build incinerators.

Give us a Green Bin!

What should we tell our civic leaders at the public meeting downtown tonight?

What can they do right now, without waiting for Metro Vancouver to sort out whether to build three new incinerators or six?

What can they do to have an immediate positive impact on the environment?

The answer: give us a Green Bin program.

It is not that hard to get the sloppy wet stuff out of our gargage. Toronto loves their Green Bin program. Food waste is the main source of the greenhouse gas methane that makes our landfills one of the top contributors to climate change.

It's something we should be taking responsibility for.

We have seen the future, and it is green.

Let's hear from you

Just a couple weeks to the public consultations in April on Metro Vancouver's solid waste management plan.

Between now and the first consultation session (Tuesday, April 8, in Surrey), have a look at our Zero Waste Vancouver slide show.

Tell us what works, what doesn't. Are we speaking your mind?

During the month of April (and probably beyond) we hope to take the slide show to every municipal council in the Lower Mainland. It's time to start a serious conversation with our elected leaders about waste in our region. This is an election year, and they will all be paying attention.

If you would like to work with us to deliver the slide show to your municipal council, let us know.

We're also keen to talk to any community groups interested in thinking about whether they support spending $3 billion on waste incinerators.We'll all use them and pay for them if they're built, whether we want them or not.

The Zero Waste slide show is a living document. Help us grow it.

pic: www.only2clicks.com

Zero Waste ready to take action

This past weekend was the pilot. Now we're ready to go full-scale.

Next month Metro Vancouver begins public consultation on its proposal to build up to six "waste-to-energy" incinerators as part of a new $3 billion dollar waste management plan for the region. Is this what citizens want?

We have produced a simple slide presentation for citizens that will soon be posted on this website. It looks closely at Metro Vancouver's proposal. It provides helpful tools for evaluating options. And it presents practical recommendations for consideration.

Our goal is to work with local citizens and have this presentation shown to every City Council in the region. We think it's time for citizens and political leaders to have a conversation about the future of waste management in our region.

We are at a cross-roads. Our region can choose the 19th Century waste technologies that gave rise to the Throw-Away Society ~ or we can re-tool our waste management system so it provides corrective action over time leading us towards a Zero Waste future.

If you would like to see this presentation or arrange a viewing for your group or your City Council, contact us at zerowastevancouver@gmail.com.

Pic: http://www.greendel.org/

Metro Pols inundated with sales pitches

Garbage is big business. Large urban areas like Vancouver are a hot market. Especially when they send out signals that they have a "garbage crisis" and might be ready to spend $3 billion on new incinerators.

Yesterday Marvin Hunt, Chair of the Metro Vancouver Waste Management Committee, told his fellow committee members his mailbox was crammed with advertising from companies wanting to sell us garbage solutions.

He advised his colleagues to forward the enquiries to Metro Vancouver staff. Rightly so. There should be no perception that a politician is pushing a particular company or technology. This is why municipal waste departments are staffed with professionals who make purchasing recommendations based on rigorous screening.

Nonetheless, these professionals take direction from politicians on what to look for. And politicians, in turn, take direction from citizens. That's why, if we care what happens to our garbage, we have to start looking at the options and making it clear what we think should be on the shopping list.

Letters from citizens aren't junk mail. They get read and help shape policy. Marvin Hunt twice emphasized yesterday that no decision has been made about how this region will manage its garbage, regardless of the "strategies" that were sent out in the draft plan.

March and April will be our window of opportunity to make our views known. If you aren't sure how the garbage system works and where we should be going, come to the Citizens' Workshop on Zero Waste on March 15 & 16 (see sidebar).

pic: www.boonecountyky.org

Save the dates ~ March 14/15

Zero Waste Vancouver is teaming up with the Sierra Club Lower Mainland Group to offer concerned citizens a crash course on waste next month. It will start with some speeches on Friday night, March 14, at the SPEC building. Then we'll sit down on Saturday, March 15, for a half-day workshop at the Roundhouse Community Centre. Check back here for details.

It's hard work being a citizen, keeping ahead of the decisions that are being made in our name about all the different things that really affect how we live on this planet.

But citizens in our region are doing a good job. We've changed the debate on transportation, climate change, energy, conservation of our natural heritage, and a whole range of other important areas of public concern.

In an era when the official discussion is dumbed down, a new wave of informed citizens are raising the bar. We're putting new facts on the table. Proposing new solutions that work. Getting results.

We need to do the same thing with waste. Decisions are being made now about how our waste will be managed for decades to come. There is an information vacuum that is being gleefully filled by the incineration industry.

The March 14/15 event will start the process of taking back our local public waste management system and shaping it to meet the region's and the planet's genuine needs. It will be fun and satisfying to work together and chalk up one more small victory for the public good.

Pic: Boulder EcoCycle

Rendering plant meeting February 7

Grandview-Woodlands residents downwind of the West Coast Reduction rendering plant (105 North Commercial Drive) will meet with Metro Vancouver at Wise Hall on Thursday night (Feb 7) to see what further steps can be taken to deal with odour problems from the plant. The registration starts at 6:30 pm and the discussions at 7:00. If anyone goes to this meeting, it would be great to hear a report.

Metro Vancouver is forming a citizens' committee to determine what an "acceptable" level of odour is.

Rendering is an industrial process to deal with animal byproducts. An interesting article in the Vancouver Courier quoted the Vice-Chairman of the rendering company: "We consider ourselves a very good corporate citizen and we are providing an important service to the city of Vancouver," he said. "We process through this plant every year 50 per cent of the total volume of solid waste that goes to Cache Creek and, if we weren't processing that, I'm not sure where it would go. And I think we do it in a way that probably is the envy of most cities in North America."

Rendering is a spin-off industry from large-scale meat production, using by-products to produce salable commodities. There are two different processes, according to Wikipedia, one of which "cooks slaughterhouse offal to produce a thick lumpy stew which is then sold to the pet-food industry to be used principally as tinned cat and dog foods. Such plants are notable for the offensive odour that they can produce and are often sited well away from human habitation."

pic: PortVancouver

Learning from the starlings!

How does social change happen? How will we shift our collective destiny to avoid disaster ahead? Let's do what the starlings do.

Research in the UK cracked the starlings' secret for coordinating their movements so vast flocks can veer around in complex formations without crashing into each other, at the same time protecting themselves against predators.

Turns out what each starling does is keep track of the movements of just seven other birds. This forms an interlocking network of coordinated movements that protects not only the individual birds but the whole flock.

There's a message here about social change. Each of us, seven other people, and together we can make change without waiting for "them" to solve our problems for us.

pic: http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/h/hamwall/about.asp

Vancouver Sun dithers while the rest of us get busy

Metro Vancouver's landmark decision this week to cancel the Ashcroft landfill plan ~ and indeed decline any offers to ship our garbage up to the Interior ~ has the Vancouver Sun editorial board in a dither.

Good thing they're not in charge of managing our waste for us.

The fact is that the sky is not falling. There are sensible solutions to our waste problem that will not drive taxpayers into penury. These are not hypothetical solutions, but programs that are on the ground and delivering results in other communities in Canada and around the world.

These solutions are now within reach in our region, because our political leaders have put the brakes on the misguided plan to truck garbage up the Fraser Canyon.

While the Sun dithers, Zero Waste Vancouver will help deliver solutions that we can point to with pride when we invite the world to our region in 2010. This region was built by people who believed they could get things done and make the world a better place. The story isn't over yet.

Durham ON the front lines today ~ we'll be called up soon

The people taking to the streets in this picture are citizens of the Durham Region of Ontario. They are trying to block the development of a waste incinerator in their community. They have a lot to teach us, because we will soon be facing the same prospect.

The staff at Metro Vancouver have taken the initiative of declaring waste-to-energy incineration a "Zero Waste" process, and they are busy drafting a Request for Proposals for new incinerator developments that will go out early this year. The plan is to burn 1.25 million tonnes of waste per year ~ in addition to the 280,000 tonnes we currently burn in Burnaby and the million or so tonnes we bury in landfills. This is all based on the thermodynamically impossible assumption that we can double our consumption/waste generation in the next 25 years.

It's time to bone up on the subject. To get started, read Zero Waste Vancouver's two-page backgrounder. If you want to know more, dig into this very readable 157-page report produced by a determined citizen in the Durham region. And visit the Durham Environment Watch website for inspiration for the battle ahead.

It won't be long before we're fighting our own battle. Let's be ready.

Metro Vancouver changes the codes ~ to keep citizens out?

Over the winter holiday, elves at Metro Vancouver were busy overhauling the regional government's website ~ with the result that many Metro Vancouver documents that were linked from this Zero Waste Blog have new URLs and cannot be accessed through the links we provided in earlier posts.

We will have to go back and find the new URLs and repair the links.

In addition to changing the URLs, Metro Vancouver also removed all the agendas and attached reports for years prior to 2007. I complained about this right away, received a response that a "focus group" had told them one year of past agendas was sufficient. My complaint resulted in their posting two years of past agendas and reports (2006 and 2007), with earlier years requiring requests from staff for access.

Reports and agendas are part of the public record. Every effort should be made to ensure that the public has easy access to these reports. (pic: www.digitalopportunity.org)

Let them eat grapes

At the invitation-only Sustainbility Dialogue hosted by Metro Vancouver yesterday, there was a lot of discussion about how important it is to "educate" the public about waste reduction. But the public, of course, was not there to hear it.

The sixty or seventy lucky invitees were treated to a buffet lunch followed by brief remarks (and lots of jokes about strict time limits) by a series of speakers. Moderator Rafe Mair then opened the floor to questions and comments from the audience.

First up was a Squamish First Nation invitee, who set a tone by noting, after welcoming us to his people's traditional territory, that we had all just feasted on "sustainable" grapes and pineapples flown in from god knows where. Then he got to his main point, which was First Nations' concerns about Metro Vancouver's plans for a landfill in the Interior.

From there the Q&A lost focus, with the people who were sitting in the rows of folding chairs posing random questions or comments, each one of which had to be ponderously answered by all the speakers at the table at the front of the room... I think I was probably not the only one who wondered if this was worth the cost to the rest of the public.

Speaking of costs to the public, the meeting ended with what was intended to be a positive announcement. Metro Vancouver's $160,000 expenditure on a Holiday Outreach Program achieved a very respectable number of "impressions" on the public. If you're not sure what an "impression" is and you didn't know there was a holiday campaign, you can learn more at a "special workshop" meeting of the Waste Management Committee on Tuesday, January 22nd, in New Westminster.

Let's all dialogue with Metro Vancouver

A visitor to our blog just noticed that the Metro Vancouver Sustainability Dialogues coming up this month (see coming events at the very bottom of this page) require pre-registration ~ but there is no registration function on the web page.

Turns out that the Dialogues are "By Invitation Only."

To request an invitation, send an email to:

Judy Robertson Communications Specialist, Corporate Communications Telephone: 604-432-6205 e-mail: judy.robertson@gvrd.bc.ca.

It just seems sometimes as though Metro Vancouver is trying to make it hard to get involved....)

pic: http://www.spazticplastic.com/?sp=wallpapers

Even the "partners" are in the dark!

Transparency. Public access to information. Public participation.

These are hallmarks of good government and a healthy democratic process. But it is a struggle to make them part of the process at Metro Vancouver.

The part-time political directors do their best to provide direction but the workings of Metro Vancouver bureaucracy remain mysterious to most of us citizens. Decisions are made in the bowels of the bureaucracy that we find out later we might really have wanted to know about.

Like the purchase in 2000 of a cattle ranch in Ashcroft to build a 100-year landfill.

And the decision taken last year sometime and suddenly announced in a Communique on October 9 2007 to build several new waste incinerators in our region.

Sometimes, with Orwellian doublespeak, Metro Vancouver stages costly public events with cryptic titles and no clue to the content as a way of "stimulating fresh thought." Such seems to be the case with a series coming up this month of so-called Future of the Region Sustainability Dialogs. It was quietly posted on the Metro Vancouver website over the holiday period.

The website calls these a "series of high-profile debates and discussions is intended to help decision makers shape the future of the region by presenting a range of views which hopefully challenge and stimulate fresh thought on a range of regional issues."

Chair Lois Jackson is quoted as saying: “Expert panelists and highly–engaged participants have provided fresh and stimulating perspectives on regional issues.”

But less than 2 weeks before the first event on January 17 there are no speakers listed on the promotional material - or even any debate topics beyond the generic "waste management."

I try to keep up to date on Metro Vancouver events, but I sure never saw these coming. Nor, apparently, did the sponsors.

We are told that Metro Vancouver is partnering with Chambers of Commerce and Boards of Trade across Metro Vancouver to provide these dialogs. But a search of every one of the 13 Chambers of Commerce and Boards of Trade whose logos grace the announcement shows that not a single one has any of the 3 events posted on their websites. In fact, the Surrey and Delta chambers have actually scheduled conflicting events in the time slots for the "Sustainability Dialog" in their sector of the region.

Whose idea was it to hold these "dialogs" and why don't they want us to know what is going to be debated there? (image source: http://www.overtheline.4t.com/)