Buried treasure

Another reason not to build waste-to-energy plants that vaporize plastic. It may become a valuable resource sooner than we think.

Check out this article from the Times (London): "Rubbish dumps are regarded by the recycling industry as an untapped source of riches, with an estimated 200 million tonnes of plastic buried as landfill since the late 1980s. At today's prices of £200 a tonne the discarded plastic has a value of about £40 billion. Alongside it are smaller, but still significant, quantities of valuable metals, including copper and aluminium."

Cache Creek expansion shifts focus from CO2 to CH4

Belcorp's announcement last week that it is committed to expanding the Cache Creek landfill for Metro Vancouver garbage takes us out of the fire into the frying pan.

Belcorp is likely to get a permit to expand the interior landfill. This certainly will make it twice as hard for Metro Vancouver to defend its case for building waste-to-energy incinerators at a cost of $3 billion, including ongoing disposal fees that will be double or triple today's rates.

But will that extra 15 million tonnes of easy disposal capacity lull our region into dealing with our waste problem the way we always have: loosening our belt rather than going on a diet?

Metro Vancouver is close to the bottom of the list in the provincial rankings of per-capita waste disposal. We produce 731 kg of waste per capita each year, compared to the provincial average of 609 kg ~ or Victoria's rate of 452 kg per person.

But an even bigger challenge we'll face if Belcorp lets us loosen our belt is going to be gas.

It's not a pretty subject, but when we shovel untreated garbage full of juicy organics into a landfill, the enteric bacteria in the landfill's bowels produce staggering quantities of potent and smelly methane.

An urgent priority for public policy is to reduce society's contribution of methane to the atmosphere.

The provincial government is seeking public comment right now on a landfill gas regulation that won't help much, because its focus is on landfill gas capture rather than landfill gas prevention.

Turns out it's hard to capture methane ~ the estimates of efficiency range from 2% - 90%. At an intensity 21 times worse than carbon dioxide, methane does not provide that much room for error.

Right now our region is sending 350,000 tonnes of compostable organics to landfills every year ~ simply because we have no alternative. Add to that over 30,000 tonnes of pet wastes (there's a subject you will be hearing more about!). We could cut our waste by one-third ~ and prevent climate change ~ just by setting up programs for organics.

Back in the late 1880s, New York City's Commissioner of Streets Colonel George E. Waring, Jr. said:

“There is no surer index of the degree of civilization of a community than the manner in which it treats its organic wastes.”

Pic: Kidzworld.com

What Metro Vancouver doesn't want us to think about

Prevent Cancer Now, a Canada-wide movement to eliminate the preventable causes of cancer, has just launched an anti-incineration campaign.

Their website says:

Almost all of us know someone who has cancer, or who has died from one of over 200 different types of cancer. We know the anguish, suffering and grief cancer causes. It has become so common that we think of it as an unavoidable part of life.

People are being diagnosed with cancer at unprecedented rates. Melanomas, breast and prostate cancers, colon cancer, testicular cancer and multiple myeloma are all increasing. During the 25 years from 1976 to 2001, the age-adjusted incidence of cancer among males increased by 27.7%, and the female rate increased by 17.8%. (Canadian Cancer Statistics 2006)

After examining 10 million people over a 70-year period, a recent Swedish study found that cancers were 90% environmental in origin, with "environmental" meaning everything outside our bodies that can make its way in, including tobacco smoke, toxic chemicals, alcohol, radiation from nuclear power plants, and the sun, processed foods high in sugars, fats and additives, some pharmaceutical drugs, medical x-rays, and more.

These are avoidable substances, which should not be trespassing into our bodies. With changed policies, and industrial/agricultural practices that focus on prevention and precaution, with healthier diets and other personal habits, we can prevent this epidemic.

Pic: Prevent Cancer Now

Plasco gets chilly reception in Port Moody

A larger-than-expected audience turned out for last night's public meeting hosted by the Port Moody Environmental Protection Committee's Waste Conversion Task Force. They came out on a hot Tuesday night after the long weekend to hear about the Plasco garbage gasification process proposed for their city.

It was hard to judge what the 100 people in the room were thinking as they listened to Rod Bryden, Plasco President and CEO. Bryden has a very effective speaking style: quiet, sincere, understated. The audience remained polite and attentive even as the presentation went on for double the allotted time (60 minutes, rather than 30).

Then the members of the Council-appointed Task Force, which is made up of citizens and chaired by Councillor Mike Clay, began posing questions.

For instance, they asked Bryden to clarify Plasco's position on composting. Surprisingly, Bryden suggested that composting is a "sacred cow" and that the city might do better not to spend money separating organics from the garbage and just have them gasified instead.

The organic materials would be "returned" to their "preceding natural elements" just as the other wastes are. And all these simple "elements" would then "recombined" into one product: syngas.

One product that can serve one purpose: producing energy.

(What extreme simplification, it occurred to me. Willing to give up all that diversity and all those opportunities for a quick shot of energy. When will someone notice that energy is the elephant in the room: we've already demonstrated that we don't know how to use energy responsibly ~ now we're willing to burn anything we can get our hands on to make more....)

Bryden was then pressed by members of the audience on his claim that the Plasco facility will have "no stack." People pointed out that the energy generation component of the Plasco facility is combustion of the syngas in an internal combustion engine, a process that cannot occur without a stack to allow the release of carbon dioxide... along with other substances including dioxins, furans and nanoparticles that Bryden had to admit were theoretically possible in the emissions, company predictions notwithstanding.

In response to another question from the audience, it came out that in addition to the stacks there are "flares" for the synthetic fuel to be burned off without producing energy, in the event of a malfunction in the engine.

And malfunction of the equipment was a problem, Bryden admitted under insistant questioning from the audience. When the Ottawa test plant stopped using "surrogate material" and moved on to real garbage, the feeder system jammed up ("crankcase stuck in the shredder") and they had to ship the waiting waste back to the city landfill while they resolved the problem. This is why the test plant was able to process only half the waste the city delivered to it. Welcome to the real world of dirty fuel, Plasco.

Asked if Port Moody's plant could be scaled smaller than the proposed 400 tonnes per day (which is approximately 36 times more waste than is produced by the households in Port Moody), Bryden said they could scale it down some ~ but if they went below 200 tpd it would reduce the "efficiency" and perhaps make the plant uneconomic.

The economics were of interest to the audience who probed, among other things, the $3.6 million dollar "royalty" to Ottawa if Plasco drums up business in other communities.

The audience also posed a question to Councillor Clay: why the rush to complete this enquiry in the summer? Can there be a referendum in the fall election? To which Clay did not shut the door.

If there is a referendum, the process that Clay is leading will be a huge contribution to the process. Hats off to Port Moody, a town of 30,000, for conducting a public "due diligence" process that brings out an audience of this size. And hats off to the good citizens of Port Moody who are taking the trouble to dig for answers before the city signs up.

pic: Councillor Mike Clay

Province sends Metro Vancouver back to the drawing board

The province has sent Johnny Carline back to square one in the regional waste planning process. This might protect elected officials from embarrassment in the upcoming civic elections ~ and even buy time for a good plan to come forward.

This blog reported last month that Carline narrowly averted a rebellion by the Waste Management Committee when he proposed sending a letter out to municipal councils seeking sites for incinerators ~ before "waste-to-energy" has even been sanctioned as a strategy for our region. The letter was narrowly approved by the Committee, with vocal misgivings voiced by several members.

The following day Carline travelled to Victoria to meet with the province and it was there that he got his come-uppance, it would seem.

In a report that was hastily written and distributed to Metro Board members mere hours before their last scheduled meeting on July 18, Carline recommended that the Board ignore its Committee's advice and, instead, adopt recommendations inspired by an "extremely constructive and extended dialogue" with the province.

Carline's report admits that "recent public discussion on waste to energy and the prospect of discussing potential siting at this time had raised the same misgivings at the provincial level as they had at the regional level."

The extended dialogue between Carline and ministry staff resulted in a new process for developing the waste plan, one that involves more consultation with the public as well as "a report by an outside consultant assessing the relative characteristics and merits of landfills and waste to energy" for waste that can't be recycled. The province also wants Metro Vancouver to "develop a report setting out the strategies and actions... to achieve a 70% diversion target by 2015."

When this report was put on the table for discussion on July 18, it raised additional questions of process. Many of the Directors had not even seen it. Some who had seen it objected to Carline trying to over-ride the Committee's advice. Still others expressed the view that the province shouldn't be butting into the region's business. In the end, the decision was deferred to a special meeting of the GVS&DD Board on July 25. At that meeting, reportedly, the recommendation was approved.

Now the politicians are off duty until September. When they come back, we'll be gearing up for civic elections. Zero Waste Vancouver will be organizing a campaign to make sure all candidates disclose where they stand on waste-to-energy incineration. See the Zero Waste Vancouver position paper here.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

We just learned that Plasco Group has laid claim to the URL http://www.zerowastevancouver.com/ ~

Accept no substitutes!

Two Ontario cities agree not to pursue incineration

Two Ontario communities, Niagara and Hamilton, have made a commitment to focus on waste reduction instead of disposal.

Niagara Region and the City of Hamilton teamed up four years ago to find a common solution to "a growing global concern: limited landfill space."

They looked at 8 options for disposing of their excess garbage, narrowed the choices down to three. One was "thermal treatment" (waste-to-energy incineration or gasification).

But last Friday the Working Group set up to oversee the joint Waste Plan process received a staff report that threw the process into reverse. The two communities' managers of waste planning recommended that the communities focus on waste diversion instead.

The staff report outlined specific, tangible steps that each community can take to increase the amount of waste they recover, reducing the amount going to landfills.

Rather than pursuing expensive new disposal plants as other Ontario communities are doing (see details in the Appendix of the report), Niagara and Hamilton are going to push for waste reduction.

Good for you, Hamilton and Niagara!