Let's think about liquid waste

I've been in retirement for 10 years since this blog was active, growing carrots and dancing. Now I feel the pull to join a public conversation about waste again. What's on my mind?

Liquid waste.

What got me going was a visit from the roto-rooter, who informed me that our sewer was blocked by lint from our washing machine. He cleaned it out and the drain ran free, but I could see this was not a long-term solution.

We are a household of two since our kids left home 20 years ago and the cat died in 2015. But you would be amazed how much lint comes out of our washing machine. Surely, lint is an issue for the municipal liquid waste management system.

I devised a solution that captures the lint from our house before it goes down the pipe.

I went to the thrift store yesterday and brought home a couple of sheer curtains. I cut them up and stitched up the sides to form little bags, about one square foot in size. I fastened a bag to the pipe that carries water from the machine to the laundry sink. I used a sleeve clamp.

I made a prototype several months ago and it worked great. However it got clogged with lint that blocked it from flowing through the cloth. I emptied the lint out every once in a while in order to "re-use" the bag. From now on, I'll replace the bag when it gets clogged with lint. One panel of sheer curtain material ($5.49 minus the 30% senior discount) yielded 24 bags. I was lucky to find it in a dark plum color with a fanciful pattern of falling leaves. 

Now I will begin a research project on lint.

Webinar this Friday, 10:30 Pacific time

Risks Associated with Waste Incineration

What the Waste to Energy Industry is Not Telling You

Webinar: Friday, May 30, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm

 

Please join us for this webinar where a panel of experts and public interest advocates will discuss the economic, environmental and public health risks posed by waste incineration, and the impacts felt by communities that have built them.

Metro Vancouver has a plan to build a new waste incinerator in BC. So far, three communities have been identified as potential sites (Delta, Nanaimo and Port Mellon) but six more sites are still to be announced.  

There will be increasing pressure on these communities to accept the proposed incinerator, but the outcome is far from inevitable. In recent years, Powell River, Kamloops, Port Moody, Nanaimo and Christina Lake have all stopped proposals to burn waste in their communities. 

Hosted by Zero Waste BC, Zero Waste Canada and the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, this webinar will feature guest speakers from Detroit, San Francisco and BC, speaking about the multiple risks posed by incinerators, as well as better waste management options for communities to consider.  

Webinar Panel:   

Russell Brewer, Councillor, City of Powell River
Ahmina Maxey, Coordinator, Zero Waste Detroit Coalition
Bradley Angel, Director, Greenaction for Health & Environmental Justice

Moderated by Jamie Kaminski, Zero Waste Canada

 If you wish to join the webinar, please RSVP Jenna Ralston at jenna@spakemedia.com by Tuesday, May 27^th.
An email with webinar/call information will be sent to you, after you have responded. Also, please share this invitation with any colleagues or friends that may be interested.     

MMBC says it won't burn - but Metro Vancouver will be lobbying the province to force them to

Today I sat in on a meeting of the Sunshine Coast Regional District Board where MMBC's Allen Langdon was briefing the politicians about the new stewardship program for PPP (packaging and printed paper) which will be rolling out in 24 days.

The meeting was very tense, with the politicians struggling to articulate the many basic questions about the program that still have not been resolved -- like, what will it look like?

One question that came up: what is MMBC planning to do with the "residuals" -- non-recyclable materials that are collected in the program. Would they be burning those residuals in an incinerator? This was the allegation made by a well-known, award-winning local recycler, linking the MMBC program to Metro Vancouver's plan to build an incinerator, possibly right up the Sound in Port Mellon.

Langdon insisted that the recycler was "misinformed" and repeated several times that MMBC had no plan to incinerate residuals, but would be landfilling them instead.

It may be true that MMBC has no such plan at this time. However, they will be up against pressure coming from Metro Vancouver to force them to burn their residuals.

This is a component of Metro Vancouver's new solid waste management plan. Section 3.3.3 of Metro's plan, on page 26, says that the region will request the provincial government to develop "requirements for existing and future stewardship programs to use the non-recyclable portion of returned material as fuel rather than landfilling."

It may not be MMBC's plan at this time to burn residuals, but it clearly is Metro Vancouver's plan. And that plan has been approved by the province.

NOTE: In Europe, where the concept of producer responsibility for packaging was introduced in 1991, producers are obligated to achieve targets just as they are under our regulation. But the European directive was amended in 2003 so that the targets don't require recycling any more.

Since 2008, "at least 60 % by weight of packaging waste [is required] to be recovered or incinerated at waste incineration plants with energy recovery". The Directive underscores the point:  [t]he incineration of waste at plants with energy recovery is regarded as contributing to the realisation of these objectives.

Is this where we're headed in BC, with Metro Vancouver's help?

 

This is what recycling looks like in Vancouver

What is this all about?

 

One visitor to the blog recognized the plant in this video clip. S/he pointed out that this plant is not sorting materials collected in the City of Vancouver.

 

Right! If it had been a load of City materials, paper and containers would not have been mixed together on the conveyor belt. Vancouver is one of the few remaining cities in the Metro region that ask households to separate their recyclables into three streams: newsprint, mixed household paper, and containers.

 

The recycling plant pictured here sorts materials from the growing number of cities in our region (and across North America) that offer single stream recycling. Households put all their recyclable materials in one container, leaving it to someone else to sort them out.

 

If you think (as I do) that this looks like a pretty awful job, standing at a speeding conveyor for 8 hours a day, consider this: what if it was not just recyclable materials flowing by, but mixed garbage?

 

The garbage industry is preparing to build three mixed waste processing plants, where people at conveyor belts like this will split open garbage bags and sort through the contents looking for recyclable and compostable materials. The proposal met with resistance from existing recyclers.

 

The rationale for the garbage-sorting plants is that people living in apartments and condos are never going to be convinced to sort their recyclable materials out of their garbage.

 

 

Zero waste businesses in bin cleaning

Today my email Inbox brought an example of how an environmental problems can stimulate economic opportunities.

The environmental problem in this morning's email was smelly food waste bins. "You already know that the City of Vancouver has rolled out changes in the frequency of garbage pickup to every other week beginning May 1st," wrote my correspondent.

"This may result in more odour, bacteria, and pests in the summer months, and can be an excuse for residents not to participate in the Green Bin Program."

So what's the solution? A new bin cleaning service provided by VIP Bin Cleaning. A customer signs up for service online  and provides an address. VIP's mobile machine arrives once a month on the day of bin pickup. The bin is cleaned in 2-3 minutes. The basic subscription service works out to $8 a month.

Turns out VIP Bin Cleaning is "a global bin-cleaning franchise" that originated in the UK in 1997. The franchisor "cleans over 2 million bins across seven countries annually."

Somebody looking for an economic opportunity in bin cleaning could just get a bucket and a brush. But the benefits to getting into the business as a franchisee are spelled out on the parent company website. The VIP people have developed equipment that makes the job easier and conserves water, for instance.

Turns out there are a number of bin cleaning franchises out there, including GreenCleen (also in the UK). There's even one available on Kijiji in Guelph ON.

Surely this is the beginning of a green wave...

Waste management industry in disarray

They were lined up in the Metro Vancouver Boardroom today, over a dozen speakers (one an avowed "lobbyist") waiting to tell Metro Vancouver politicians to butt out of waste management and let free enterprise solve the problem. They were members of the Waste Management Association of BC, delivering in person the message they published in the full-page ad that ran in the Vancouver Sun yesterday.

The issue on the table was a proposal by Metro to impose "flow control" on garbage. This would be a regulation, in Metro's own words, that "would require residential and commercial garbage to be delivered to Regional Facilities.

The Metro website backgrounder emphasizes that this is about the flow of garbage, not recyclable materials. It says: "Source-separated recyclable materials and materials like construction or demolition waste would be exempted."

The speakers today were all goin on about how flow control would destroy recycling.

But Metro says that regulating the flow of garbage will encourage recycling! The places haulers are taking our waste to are not as responsible as we are. They don't have disposal bans on recyclable materials the way we do. Their lower disposal charges encourage wasting.

Frances Bula approached me after the meeting and asked if I didn't think it was a good idea for Metro to cut off the flow of waste to other places.

But garbage isn't that simple.

The real intent behind Metro's proposal is to make sure that the new incinerator they're planning to build doesn't run out of fuel.

In a veiled way, the website acknowledges this: "Metro Vancouver is developing a strategy [i.e. a half-billion dollar incinerator] to manage the disposal of residential and ICI waste generated within the Region. Metro Vancouver’s proposed approach is requiring that residential and commercial waste generated in the region be disposed at Regional Facilities."

Metro should not be regulating the market in order to feed its own incinerator. Rather, as a few of the more public-minded speakers argued today, Metro should be using its regulatory authority and its resources to promote recycling. For instance, they should police their own disposal facilities and enforce their own existing regulations against throwing away recyclable materials. (Currently, Metro neither publicizes nor enforces their bans: it's like there were a law requiring us to stop at intersections but no signs and no police. One speaker noted that only 10% of the loads at regional facilities are checked for banned materials.)

Should we explore whether Metro has the authority to regulate recycling facilities? One of the speakers presented a promotional video of a "dirty MRF" (a facility that sorts raw garbage -- as opposed to a regular MRF that sorts materials that were set out for recycling). He entreated Metro politicians to give his company a chance to build a dirty MRF in Vancouver. A later speaker -- also a member of the waste association -- said history had shown dirty MRFs were a failure. Who speaks for the Waste Management Association of BC?

Maybe we don't need regulation of MRFs. The market may decide. China is certainly sending a strong signal.

FACT: The "waste management industry" includes our local governments. They have been in the garbage business for a hundred years. It's been an uneasy relationship between the public and private sectors of the waste industry. Local governments are the clients of the waste industry, and also competitors, especially in BC where disposal facilities are almost all publicly owned and many cities even have their own trucks and crews.

When our local governments try to beat the competition through the use of regulation, things get dirty and the industry gets mad. Seagulls squabbling over the garbage.

And by the way...

We'll be there tomorrow when the Metro Waste Committee holds its monthly meeting (12 - 4 pm, second floor Boardroom 4330 Kingsway). We'll be holding signs that remind them that not everyone out there supports the idea of spending half a billion dollars on incinerators. The fact is, we're beginning to get organized. Zero Waste has spread beyond Vancouver... to BC... to Canada. We're part of a world-wide movement of organizations making the link between waste and social injustice.

There is another way. We won't get there by building incinerators. Or by letting the garbage industry set our public policy.