Three reports challenge landfill gas to energy concept

The City of Vancouver -- and all of us citizens -- have a liability to overcome in our pursuit to be the world's Greenest City.

Each year we send nearly a half-million tonnes of mixed garbage to our City-owned landfill in Delta, a practice that produces the potent GHG methane.

To address this vulnerability, the City installed pipes to capture the gas in 1991. The captured gas was "flared" -- burned in an open flame -- so that it emitted CO2 rather than CH4. Then in 2002 the City signed a 20 year agreement with Maxim Power to use the captured gas to produce electricity. The City receives revenues of $200 - 300 thousand per year to offset the cost of maintaining the system. The captured gas produces enough energy each year to power 6,000 homes. (see the 2009 Vancouver Landfill Annual Report and this Solid Waste page from the City's Sustainability website.)

The bad news is the gas that escapes.

Two reports this week call for a policy of methane prevention, rather than end-of-pipe approaches.

The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario's Annual Greenhouse Gas Progress Report slammed the landfill-gas-to-energy concept in an interview, saying that "landfills are inherently leaky" and that the "process of using landfills as digesters is faulty."

Also in the news this week is a report released by North Carolina State University that points to contradictory policies that encourage landfilling of biodegradable materials that break down before the gas capture systems are in place.

Twenty years into effort to control the emission of methane from the Vancouver landfill, we still have no way to measure the amount of gas that escapes. Furthermore, the City report admits that fully one-third of the gas that is captured is not put to "beneficial use" to produce electricity, but simply flared.

In his report looking at the full spectrum of GHG emissions, Gord Miller advised his province: "Given methane's significantly higher short term global warming potential, the prevention of fugitive methane emissions from landfills should become a near-term priority."

In January 2010, a report by the Sierra Club called for a shift to methane prevention -- and also pointed to other harmful pollutants in landfill gas.

Zero Waste Vancouver will be pitching in to help the City get more folks composting in their backyards this summer....

Councillor Cote answers his mail -- good start!

It isn't easy being a city councillor. So many issues to keep track of.

To his credit, New West Councillor Jonathan Cote answers emails from citizens promptly. In response to my concerns about the switch to single stream recycling he said: The main reason I supported the proposal is that it would increase recycling rates and save the city $250,000 a year. Although there would be decreased revenue from recycled materials (because of contamination) but there would be lower cost because of fewer trucks and less staff..."

He asked me to elaborate on my concerns, so I said: my main concern is that we can't build a strong recycling industry with a collection system that degrades the quality of the materials.

As Clarissa Morawski reported in this excellent study of the impacts of single-stream recycling, the savings up front (to municipalities and the garbage companies) are offset by costs to manufacturers.

If cities and the garbage industry want to be part of the industrial system (and I am not at all convinced they belong there!) then they have to think of the health of the entire system, and not just their own costs.

Pic: Councillor Jonathan Cote, New Westminster

Write to New West Councillor Jonathan Cote: more is not better

New Westminster just became the latest city in the region to switch to single-stream recycling. This is a really dumb decision. It goes against not only common sense but practical realities, and it will come back to haunt the politicians who fall for it.

The staff report that went to New West Council on April 4 recommended abandoning the curbside sort that has kept materials separate. Under the old curbside sort system, materials are collected in good condition and they can be sold for top dollar on the commodities market.

The rationale for abandoning this sensible practice is the assumption that more is always better.

Residents recycle more material, studies have found when they don't have to think. The New West staff report also reported that there would be more "contamination" of materials collected if the city switched to single-stream collection. But it drew the questionable conclusion that higher quantity outweighs the lower quality of the materials.

In a last minute presentation to Council, New West resident (and coordinator of the North Shore recycling program) made the case for keeping the curbside sort, but his advice was ignored. This week papers across the region are chalking up a victory for dumbed-down recycling.

In the recession of 2008 when the bottom fell out of the recycling market, municipalities with single-stream recycling were hardest hit. They were stuck with their huge piles of paper mixed with glass shards and messy yogurt cups, while cities that could offer clean streams of materials that had never been "contaminated" found ready buyers.

Canada's leading recycling magazine reported that single stream recycling is feeding markets in China, while starving our domestic recycling industry.

Wake up, New Westminster! Once a single-stream system is in place, it's a race to the bottom. The quality of the materials is set by the worst performing residents, and the efforts of those ov you who take the trouble to handle materials carefully are in vain. New West residents who want to do good recycling won't have any choice.

New West Councillor Jonathan Cote opined: "If you make it simple, more people will do it." Does he speak for you? Here's where to reach him: jcote@newwestcity.ca

Pic: Oregon Metro pays price for single stream recycling

Saltspring brings Annie Leonard to speak!

If you can make your way to Saltspring Island the last weekend in May you can meet one of North America's shining lights of Zero Waste. Annie Leonard of Story of Stuff fame will be speaking at a fundraiser for the "Centre for Child Honouring." Here is a link to the poster with details.

We've moved! Congratulations for finding us!

Our old domain (zerowastevancouver.org) was usurped by some nameless poacher within days after we missed our renewal payment... so we are camping out at blogspot while we settle into the new domain that we've staked a claim on (zerowastevancouver.ca)

Our new homestead will have an archive where we'll store the old blog and the broadsheet against Metro Vancouver's incinerators. And there will be lots of big new rooms where visitors and members of the family can get involved in our projects. There is lots of work to do:

• Bin Doctors ~ what neighbourhood are you in? we'll connect you with your composting support team


• Bag Project ~ a made-in-Vancouver alternative to those sweatshop reusable bags that we all have too many of...


• Our Heroes in the community ~ proceeds from our Bag Project will provide targeted support to projects that we think are making a difference


• The Just Ask Me Page ~ if I don't know the answer to your question about garbage, I'll help you find it


• Issues that matter right now ~ background and action alerts for busy people. None of us can do it alone - small actions, strategically directed, are how we will make change together


• Blog ~ commentary on topics close to home and beyond

Frito Lay *compostable* bag a disaster - let's learn from it

Last January the fast-food giant Frito Lay (owned by Pepsico) introduced what it claimed was a compostable chip bag. This would have been good news. It makes great sense to package food in compostable wrappings. But things went terribly wrong.

First of all, the bags aren't actually compostable. The award-winning Durham ON composting program expressly prohibits "compostable chip bags" from its green composting bins.

Second, the bags aren't recyclable either. What little biodegradable property they do have would foul up the works if they ended up in a recycled product. So that will cause problems in the Canada-wide "harmonized" recycling program for packaging proposed by the Canadian Council of Ministers of Environment. The CCME plan expressly lumps all packaging together in one regulatory bag. How will we separate out the recyclable wheat from the compostable chaff in this new program?

And what about the environmental footprint of compostable plastic, compared for instance to alternatives such as compostable paper? Frito Lay claims the bags are made with "renewable, plant-based materials" -- but they provide no information about the energy and other environmental costs of converting the molecules in those materials into plastic.

But these concerns are not why Frito Lay is pulling the bags off the market.

The real problem with the bags, according to a story in today's Wall Street Journal, is that consumers complained that they were too noisy! The WSJ reports that consumers have "lodged fierce complaints on social-networking sites." Worse: sales of the chips are down.

What does this tell us about how far we have strayed from common sense, as we move inexorably towards Peak Oil's day of reckoning?

Don't accept dumbed-down recycling

We have to cover our left flank in the battle against incineration.

With bad advice from certain consulting firms, the producers who sell us throw-away packaging are organizing to entrench inefficient recycling programs for packaging. The programs will collect everything in one messy heap and send most of it to incinerators.

Our provincial policy, on the other hand, has been to regulate producer responsibility for products one category at a time (beverages, paint, electronics, tires, etc.) rather than lump together a whole bunch of materials ("packaging") in one category creating a non-recyclable mess.


But now, because of the influence of Ontario, which has drunk the OMMRI/CIPSI/CSR koolade and is patterning its EPR system after Europe, the Canadian Council of Ministers of Environment is calling for EPR for all "packaging" like they have in Europe.

The BC ministry of environment is poised support this by bringing "packaging" in under our Recycling Regulation within the next 3 months.

This is being pitched as a plan to make producers pay the municipal cost of recycling packaging. But the real impact will be lots of "recycled" materials (if Europe is any guide) going to incinerators that pose as recycling plants.


The packaging will be sent to "MRF"s to be mechanically separated. Huge quantities of non-recyclable material will be left over after the cherry-picking. These leftovers will have no practical value except as "fuel." In the EU, producers get credit for recycling when their packaging goes to incinerators "with energy recovery."


The producers of packaged products are celebrating. The cheapest easiest way for them to get off the hook for their excess packaging is to set up a dumbed-down recycling system that minimizes sorting and doesn't hassle them to change their packaging design.


Also thrilled are the big garbage haulers who are already expanding single stream recycling in one community after another all across North America. This is a garbage hauler's dream: get paid for recycling and produce garbage (in the US, where the industry is more vertically integrated, the haulers profit at every stage).


Here in the Lower Mainland, the Surrey Metro Materials MRF is likely being set up to process all the garbage that comes back from the new packaging "recycling" program ("Thanks, Marvin!"). Covanta and the other incinerator companies are rubbing their hands in anticipation of what comes out the MRF's back door. It's part of Metro's plan. The Municipal Industrial Complex shaping our public policy and our children's options.


ACTION:Please write a letter to Penner.


Ask his ministry to:

• issue an Intentions Paper on Packaging EPR


• ask him to explain why we should change from our successful one product-category at a time approach to an approach that will mix all kinds of packaging together in the regulation, making it harder to establish accountability and less likely to foster innovation by producers


• why not instead pass regulations that target the known "low hanging fruit" in packaging?


• how about EPR for dairy containers (milk, yogurt, etc.)? or those bulky household detergents jugs & cartons? How about amending the section on consumer electronics to include packaging?

The theory is if they have to take back all that styrofoam, to say nothing of those awful clamshells for software, the industry will probably stop using them.

BOTTOM LINE: our cities and the garbage industry have to get out of the business of chasing after bottles and cans other bulky, low value packaging

It costs us a lot of money to collect containers, and yet it contributes very little to actual diversion - because containers don't actually add up to that much waste despite their bulkiness and annoyingness.

Let our cities get busy instead collecting organics/food waste -- and keep on collecting newspapers (Blue Bag) and mixed papers (Yellow Bag). Think about it: these are easy to understand, easy to collect in our city trucks. They have established markets right here in BC.

And lets go after the producers of products that come in easy-to-recycle packaging. Make them set up a system for doing that, instead of taking a free ride in the Blue Box. They'll figure out how to do it.

Over time, all that will be left in the garbage is those annoying blister packs that can't be recycled. When the easy-to-recycle low hanging fruit is not in the garbage any more, you will be able to see who's causing all the trouble. No brand-owner wants to see its brand on garbage!

Here's Penner's email: "Barry Penner, Minister"