Solid Waste and Recycling Magazine

The April/May 2008 edition of Canada's premier solid waste industry trade journal "Solid Waste and Recycling" is all about our current situation in Metro Vancouver.

The articles linked below provide a welcome perspective from outside our region, along with the sales pitches from some of the contenders for managing our waste.

Headings shown here are taken from the original magazine, with permission from the publisher.

Happy reading!

- "Metro Vancouver's New Waste Plan" is the feature article and cover story. Monica Kosmak recounts the unfolding story of Metro Vancouver's waste management challenges and explains the new proposed solid waste management plan with its controversial "waste to energy" component.

- "Metro Vancouver and the Zero Waste Debate" is the lead editorial by Guy Crittenden, editor of the magazine. This is recommended reading, as he has some interesting things to say about the public's expectations of municipal waste management and about Zero Waste Vancouver!

A series of short articles focus on some of Metro Vancouver's possible waste management strategies:

OPTION: More Waste to Energy
"Waste to Energy in Metro Vancouver: Is Smaller Better," by Ron Richter, who makes a pitch for several small incinerators (His company, Veolia, operates Metro Vancouver's existing incinerator in Burnaby).

OPTION: Landfill Disposal
"A Landfill Alternative: The Highland Valley Project," by Heather Kent, presenting the third Interior Landfill contender (vying against Ashcroft and an expanded Cache Creek landfill).

OPTION: Increased Diversion
"New Metro MRF Will Meet Zero Waste Objectives" -- a local company's new, state-of-the-art end-of-pipe recycling plant ...

OPTION: Waste Exporting
"Metro Vancouver's Potential Waste Export Decision" by Guy Crittenden, with an overview of our waste export options, including in Washington state.

OPTION: The Zero Waste Idea
"BC's leading EPR approach: To Catch a Rabbit, Think like a Rabbit" by Helen Spiegelman, explaining the beginning of-the-pipe recycling approach that BC invented for targeting and eliminating packaging waste.

What Metro Vancouver won't tell us

Tonight is the first of three public meetings (see sidebar to the right) that will will tell us what Metro Vancouver won't tell us.

Metro has been pitching its audacious proposal to build up to 6 waste-to-energy incinerators in the region, burning over a million tonnes of garbage each year. It's the centrepiece in the region's draft solid waste management plan.

And our regional politicians have been going along with it every step of the way. As recently as CBC's Early Edition this morning, Surrey Councillor Marvin Hunt was claiming incineration is all the rage in Europe (is this what they told him in Paris).

But Fraser Valley politician Patricia Ross isn't buying it.

She arranged to bring Paul Connett here to do what he did in hundreds of communities across North America during the 1980s: tell the other side.

The downwind communities in the Fraser Valley will learn what's in store for them tonight. The host communities in New Westminster and the Tri-Cities will get their chance tomorrow.

And on Wednesday night, at the Coast Plaza Hotel Ballroom in downtown Vancouver, we'll look at what incineration will cost all of us: more waste, more lost opportunities.

Can our politicians really convince us that Zero Waste means whatever you can't export to the USA, you just burn?

Pic: Clarington Watchdog ~ we are not alone!

Lining up the financing before checking with the public

Metro Vancouver is so secretive about its intentions that even its own staff are in the dark. A Metro employee was surprised to hear me claim this week that the Board had approved borrowing authority for a quarter-billion dollars to build waste-to-energy projects.

I checked my sources and found the February 1 report with the Commissioner's recommendation to authorize $250 million in borrowing for waste-to-energy, listed as one of the "major planned GVS&DD capital expenditures" (emphasis added) in Appendix 1.

So: the borrowing is approved, an RFP has been issued. What's next? Oh, yes, check in with the public... or maybe that's not necessary. Another Metro employee once reassured me that once an incinerator is in place the public gets used to it. Maybe they figure if they work fast we won't notice?

Defending the Zero Waste brand

Columnist John Barber at the Globe and Mail has cast another shot across the bow of the incineration industry, this time assailing them for falsely flying the Zero Waste flag.

In his June 14 column, Barber writes:

"The race to zero waste has become the hottest municipal sweepstakes since the move to indoor plumbing," writes Barber, "The best proof of that is the speed with which those who stand to lose from zero waste are moving to co-opt it."

As Barber reports, the Zero Waste sweepstakes heated up in Canada last week with the formation of an Ontario Zero Waste Coalition.

The new coalition is made up mainly of municipalities and citizens tired of providing waste and recycling services ~ services that benefit mainly the producers of throw-away products ~ at public expense. They're calling for 100 percent producer funding of waste management. They see this as a key driver of Zero Waste design, design that could eventually lead to a world without waste.

Who has most to lose from this Zero Waste scenario? Not the product makers, who have shown that they can design cradle-to-cradle recycling programs once they're required to do so (look at our nearly 40-year-old deposit program for beverage containers, or our stewardship programs for paint and other household hazardous products).

The people who have the most to lose from Zero Waste are the companies that make money from waste. But rather than adapt, they are co-opting the Zero Waste brand.

Chief among the co-opters on Barber's list is Plasco Energy Group. They've not only ripped off the Zero Waste brand, they've even appropriated the Ottawa brand.

Where would a waste-to-energy company be without waste?

Sometimes public servants have a similar blind spot, except in their case it comes not from the promise of profits but from public expectations that "there will always be waste" and it's the city's job to make it go away. The chance to be involved in the development of a state-of-the-art architecturally-designed incinerator brings stars to the eyes of traditionally trained waste managers.

Our own Metro Vancouver received a scathing write-up this spring in the cover story of Canada's national recycling magazine Solid Waste and Recycling for its own co-opting of the Zero Waste brand by stretching the concept, as Plasco does, to include waste-to-energy incineration.

But everything eventually comes back to the neighbourhood.

Will voters in next November's civic elections support candidates whose campaign promise is to build trash burners in their backyards?

Or will they demand good policy instead of techno-fixes:

"What's truly radical about zero waste," writes Barber, "is that it simply ignores the never-ending ruckus over the safest technology to deal with the alleged 'garbage crisis.' By focusing on policy and economics instead - banning throwaways and making producers pay for their own waste - zero waste makes landfills and incinerators essentially unnecessary.... As a pipe dream, this one is hot as can be."

Recycling economics

It's bad enough what comes out the back end of an incinerator ~ what goes in the front end is also a concern.

Seattle economist Jeffrey Morris has been warning public decision makers for decades not to invest in waste technologies that may have unanticipated opportunity costs down the line.

Here is a slide show he presented in Italy as part of a panel with Paul Connett and other American Zero Waste luminaries, as well as to a meeting in Quebec last month. Morris points to "the emerging framework" that should guide our waste processing investments:

1. GHG reductions likely imply smaller and lower Btu value disposal quantities
2. Higher energy prices likely imply higher prices for recycled materials
3. Natural resource depletion & ecosystems degradation likely provide push to replace virgin with recycled materials and to compost organics for use on farm land
4. Carbon constraints + high energy and commodity prices likely to create strong incentives for higher 3Rs levels.

Sean Mabberley, a local wood waste recycler, said the same thing to Metro Vancouver's Solid Waste Reference Panel last month. He called recycling commodity values a "moving ball" that could be rolling uphill even faster than energy prices.

Morris says to ask the snake-oil salesmen:
1)Who bears facility investment costs and risks of tonnage shortfalls?
2)Do tip fees vary directly with disposal tonnage, or is there some sort of put-or-pay guarantee?
3)How will tip fee commitments affect waste reduction, recycling & composting?
4)Who bears pollution risks & closure/post-closure costs for facilities (including ashfill)?
5)What will be the effects of climate change and higher energy & commodity prices?

Pic: Robert Neubecker in Slate

Snake Oil and Rube Goldberg

It was standing room only yesterday in the Metro Vancouver boardroom -- but only in the peanut gallery. But there were plenty of empty seats at the board table itself.

Not many politicians showed up to this special meeting of the Waste Management Committee to hear 28 delegations pitch their technological solutions to Metro Vancouver's garbage problems.

One observer commented that the proposals ranged "from Snake Oil to Rube Goldberg."

So many ways to turn garbage into gold.

But the politicians who were there served their constituents well by asking tough questions. Coquitlam Councillor Fin Donnelly set the hoops for the salesmen to jump through to prove their mettle and separate the serious contenders from the dreamers and schemers. He wanted each speaker to state: what capacity they could offer, what it would cost per tonne, how soon they could be up and running, and whether they had any successes to point to.

Pitt Meadows Mayor Don MacLean, Anmore Mayor Ralph Drew and Vancouver would-be Mayor Peter Ladner all lit into Tony Sperling, the proponent of the Highland Valley Landfill that is still hoping to be chosen by the region to succeed the Cache Creek Landfill.

The best question was posed by Ladner: with your high capital costs, what waste quantities are you going to need at this facility?

Sperling's "bioreactor" landfill concept relies on revenues from waste-to-energy to be viable. The Highland Valley Copper company "wants GHG credits" out of this deal. And the only way to generate that energy and credits is to supply the machine with lots and lots of garbage. Indefinitely.

What we need to find is a salesman selling the negawaste solution.

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