What is MBT and why are Metro's staff so scared of it?

Metro's staff are getting desperate as they keep running into roadblocks to the huge garbage incinerators they want to build.

Last Friday they pulled out all the stops. After grudgingly agreeing -- at the Board's insistence -- to let the public sit in on a "workshop" about the new solid waste management plan, the staff switched the location of the meeting at the last minute.

Nevertheless, a handful of citizens found the crowded meeting room on the Lougheed Hwy in Burnaby and saw the long slide presentation chock full of misleading information that was developed by Metro's staff to sell the plan to the Board.

The cost issue has clearly rattled Metro's staff. Two years ago, they foolishly mentioned in their trial balloon (see Figure 9, page 11) that we'd be facing over $3 billion in costs with incinerators.

But Friday's slide show presented the bizarre assertion (all "bottom line" with no explanation) that continuing to landfill our waste will bring a "$1.5 billion cost" (their emphasis) while if we build incinerators we'll enjoy "$20 million revenue."

Never mind that even after more than 20 years we are still paying down the capital cost of the Burnaby incinerator.

But the most surprising thing to me was the effort that Metro's staff put into debunking the MBT alternative.

"MBT" (mechanical biological treatment) is a simple, low-tech process for screening and stabilizing waste before putting it in a landfill. It is being practiced more and more widely in Europe as an alternative to costly incineration. It not only extends the service life of landfills by reducing the volume of the waste, but cuts the GHG emissions from landfills by 90%.

These facts were right there in Metro's AECOM report, issued last summer.

But the AECOM report based its estimate of the cost of MBT treatment on its experience with a facility in Edmonton. This huge white elephant of a plant was built by Transalta, launched with great fanfare in 2000 as a "composting plant" -- and then sold by Transalta within a year to the City of Edmonton for $97 million.

The Edmonton facility was operated by none other than Earth Tech, a company now owned by AECOM. In 2005, Tech wrote a candid account of the facility's many problems in its design and operations.

The other MBT facility that Metro drew on for cost estimates is a facility in Halifax, also built 10 years ago.

On the basis of this limited information, Metro's staff empahsized in several slides on Friday that MBT treatment "does not add value" and is not recommended.

They clearly don't want us looking around for a state-of-the-art MBT alternative that would out-compete their mass-burn incinerators.

Summer reading for citizens and politicians

Last week Metro staff presented two reports, totalling nearly 350 pages, that open up a whole new conversation about how we should manage our waste while we ramp it down to Zero.

Suddenly there are 8 options on the table. It's great news because one of them is really promising.

Metro's original plan was to shut down the Vancouver landfill and replace it with incinerators. This provoked the City of Vancouver, which owns the landfill and had looked forward to another 40 years of service out of it.

But Metro's new Option #6 proposes that we use the Vancouver landfill as planned, but pretreat the waste to make it safe before we put it in the landfill.

The pre-treatment process is called "Mechanical Biological Treatment" or MBT. This process is widely used in Europe to comply with strict landfill rules there designed to deal with the climate impacts of landfills.

European and U.S. environmentalists support MBT because it provides an alternative to incineration. It addresses the worst problems with landfills, while retaining the benefit of a disposal system that can be ramped down over time.

All of the region's politicians are gathering on June 27th in a "Council of Councils" meeting to hear a presentation about this report. Zero Waste Vancouver is preparing some questions for them to ask the consultant who did the study. If you can go to this meeting, do so! It always makes the politicians sit up straight when there are citizens in the audience.

Metro will be organizing a consultation with the rest of us in the Fall. These 2 reports will make good beach reading for wasteheads, so we can come back to work ready to help shape a really good solid waste management plan for this region. If you have thoughts as you read the report, post them here. I'll be reading them during breaks from fixing up an old house in Montreal with our kids.

Pic: Environmental Defense

Feed the earth or the atmosphere?

Metro Vancouver has set us firmly on track to cut our waste by 70% ~ hats off to the political leaders of all political stripes for their vision in setting us on this course!

Now the question arises: what will we do with the other 30%.

The incinerator salesmen are all lined up offering us a solution that looks too good to be true: we can make money by selling garbage-fueled energy.

Incineration doesn't get rid of waste completely, they concede, since at least one tonne for every five going into the plant emerges at the other end as ash that must be disposed of.

Sticker shock is another challenge ~ people of our region are going to have to really love incinerators to be willing to pay the cost of building them. (More about that below)

Cities in other parts of the world -- including Halifax NS -- are following a different path. They are setting up simple systems that mechanically and biologically "stabilize" the leftover garbage that can't be recycled. This process reduces the volume of the waste, as well as keeping out hazardous materials. Most notably from a climate change and public safety perspective, it reduces the ability of landfilled garbage to produce the greenhouse gas methane and toxic leachate.

The proponents of "MBT" (mechanical and biological treatment) include environmentalists who see it as a bridging strategy for winding down our landfilling system as we gradually ramp up recycling and composting.

Incinerators lock us into using a machine that feeds the already overburdened sky, while MBT is flexible and will let us benefit from reduced costs as we reduce our waste. Zero Waste Vancouver is researching the experience of these other communities and will be making regular reports to this blog.

(About those costs? A recent European study noted that WTE costs 54% more than landfilling, while an MBT system raises the cost of landfilling by only 8%)

Pic: the Fraser Valley through Michael Kluckner's eyes