A Truly Cool City

Tyee contributor Ruben Anderson offered another glimpse at a new way of living this week, inviting us to Claim our Rotting Riches. Food waste is the next frontier of waste reduction ~ and Anderson wants us to do it right.

He takes a sober look at the way the leading cities -- Toronto, Seattle, San Francisco -- have chosen to design their food waste composting programs and says we should do it better.

"First the city gives every household a pricey new plastic rolling tote. They buy additional trucks and hire more people. Those trucks chug up every single lane in the city until they are full, then they drive somewhere far away and dump the organic waste. Large machines pile and re-pile the organics for a few months until it breaks down into compost. They do this two to four times each month, 12 months of the year, for the rest of time...."

This centralized, industrial approach misses a better opportunity, Anderson proposes. He asks us to re-think the idea of a composting system that relies on "a river of oil."

Anderson sees a whole range of systems for managing food waste. Small to large, intensely local, and scaled to fit the purpose, from backyard composting (even in apartment complexes!) to in-house digestion systems at industrial sites.

I think Anderson's got it right. We're starting from scratch with food waste composting and this gives us an opportunity to do it differently, setting a new standard for the 21st Century.

pic: The Cedar Grove centralized composting plant that is the model for a new plant likely to be built by Metro Vancouver at the Langley wastewater treatment plant site. This is where Seattle's food waste is trucked. The plant has firm support from knowledgeable environmentalists in Everett, WA, where a plant has been in operation for several years. It got some bad press this week.

Daring political leadership

There's a BBC story making the rounds on Zero Waste listservs this week, highlighting a little town in the eastern hills of Japan where "the rubbish collectors never come."

In Kamikatsu all food waste is required to be composted and the rest of the waste is sorted into 34 categories and recycled, either by returning items to stores (where customers receive cash for items turned in) or to a Zero Waste centre operated by the town.

The BBC reports "the scheme was adopted when councillors realised it was much cheaper than incineration - even if the incinerator was used to generate power."

"A poll showed that although the Zero Waste policy has many admirers, 40% of people weren't happy about all aspects of the scheme," the BBC report continues.

"The Mayor Kasamatsu Kasuichi is undeterred: 'We should consider what is right and what is wrong, and I believe it is wrong to send a truck to collect the waste and burn it. That is bad for the environment. So whether I get support or not, I believe I should persuade people to support my policy.'

"Now he invites other politicians around the world to follow suit."

Even Chair Hunt said the timing was "horrible"

Metro Vancouver Commissioner Johnny Carline slipped an item onto the Waste Management Committee's already packed agenda on Wednesday afternoon. Committee Chair Marvin Hunt headed the new agenda item "Waste Export."

But as it turned out, the 4-page on-table report that was put before the committee had two recommendations, and only the first related to waste export.

The second recommendation was to authorize a letter to go out to all municipalities in the region, over Marvin Hunt's signature, asking the Mayors and Councils to propose sites in their communities for waste-to-energy incinerators.

The proposed letter was attached to the report. It asked the Mayors and Councils to suggest "potential areas or specific sites, preferably under municipal ownership or control, where waste-to-energy infrastructure could be integrated into existing land use or proposed land development."

Because the report was introduced "on table" those of us in the peanut gallery didn't have it before us during the discussion that ensued. But it quickly became clear that several members of the committee had serious concerns about the optics of this recommendation.

The committee had just heard from New Westminster citizen Neil Powell that members of his residents' association were beginning to suspect that the decision to build incinerators was a "done deal," despite all the public reassurances from politicians that no final decisions had been made.

This letter, several committee members pointed out, would certainly lend credence to those suspicions. A motion was debated to receive the report for information rather than sending it on to the Board with their blessing.

In the end, the committee approved the recommendation with a minor and meaningless amendment (broadening the site usage to include "other technologies"). Four members of the committee voted nay and their names will be recorded in the minutes under Agenda Item 5.14.

What the Board does with this report is still to be seen.

Trasolini buys a pig in a poke

Mayor Trasolini has made his big move.

The city of Port Moody issued an announcement yesterday that it has signed a "non-binding letter of intent" with Plasco Energy Group to build a waste-to-energy gasification plant on city-owned land on the Barnet Highway.

This is great news for the city of Ottawa.

They signed a similar deal with Plasco last month ~ but they got a special clause in their agreement. According to the Ottawa Citizen newspaper: "Because [Ottawa] was a partner in testing the technology, it will get royalties of up to $3.5 million a year after Plasco plants have been sold to other countries and cities and are operating."

Both cities claim they have nothing to lose, since Plasco takes on all the risk and the costs. All the cities have to do is pay the tipping fee to drop off their garbage.

This could cause problems for Port Moody.

The proposed Port Moody gasification plant would process 150,000 tonnes of waste each year. This is likely more waste than is generated by the good citizens of Port Moody, and Mayor Trasolini will have to go out and rope in other cities to make up the shortfall.

The Mayor has charged the Port Moody Environmental Protection Committee to go out and sell the project to the public this summer. Instead, will they be lighting a fire that will burn the Mayor in the fall civic elections?

Paul Connett's Talk

As Helen described here, Dr. Paul Connett spoke about waste incineration at a series of public meetings last week in Metro Vancouver. His detailed powerpoint presentation is available for download here as a moderately large pdf file.

To spark your interest in the download, here are two main thoughts from Dr. Connett's talk, which is tailored to the local situation here in Metro Vancouver, and which bears the foreboding title "Vancouver sabotaging Zero Waste strategy, EPR and Sustainability":

• "Even if we made incineration safe, we would never make it sensible or sustainable"
• "One or more Resource Recovery Parks coupled with an Institute for Zero Waste and Sustainability would cost less [than building incinerators], would do far more for the image of Metro Vancouver and would be far more acceptable to citizens, especialy those living in the Fraser Valley."

Dr. Connett is executive director of the American Environmental Health Studies Project and Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York.

Councillor Anton should have been there

A large crowd turned out last night to hear Paul Connett's barnstorming talk in downtown Vancouver. Too bad Vancouver Councillor Suzanne Anton wasn't there.

In a Province article this week, Anton opined that waste-to-energy technology is a "viable solution": "There are miniscule emissions.... they are not like the old incinerators pumping smoke through the Fraser Valley.... New waste-to-energy facilities are light years different from the past. In Europe, they put them in the middle of their towns.... The technologies out there seem to be working."

Surrey Councillor Marvin Hunt was the only regional politician I spotted in the audience and he fielded some questions after the talk. After the meeting he expressed interest in the "Resource Recovery Park" concept that Connett introduced in his talk. (We will be posting Connett's talk on this blog very soon.)

The next event of note is the July 9th meeting of the Metro Vancouver Waste Management Committee, where Zero Waste Vancouver will present a position opposing waste-to-energy incinerators and making recommendations for alternatives. The public is welcome to attend these meetings, which are held at 1:00 pm in the second-floor Boardroom at the Metro Vancouver Headquarters, 4330 Kingsway (Patterson skytrain station).

I will make no posts to this blog until I return from a trip on July 8th.

Waking up the citizens

It was standing room only at the church hall in New Westminster last night when Paul Connett gave a rousing hour-long speech about waste incineration.

You could have heard a pin drop in the audience during Connett's slide show. He covered the reasons we need to take a "front end" approach to our waste problem rather than wasting money and time on "back end" facilities that destroy resources.

Four of New Westminster's six city councillors took the time to attend the session. It will be interesting to see how many members of the Metro Waste Management Committee are in the Coast Plaza Ballroom tonight.

Zero Waste Vancouver sent two notices of the event to the elected leaders who sit on the Metro Waste Management Committee. Burnaby Councillor Dan Johnston sent regrets due to a prior commitment, saying "I am not sure whether I am pro or con on the issue of Waste to energy."

Johnston is a thoughtful politician who has made good contributions to the Waste Committee's work (we have him to thank that Metro has budgeted funds for composting this year -- he caught the omission last November).

However, it is getting late in the day for elected politicians to demur on this issue. After all, they approved the "Strategy for Updating the Solid Waste Management Plan" as well as the borrowing bylaw that authorizes borrowing of a quarter billion dollars for waste to energy (identified as a "Major Capital Project").

Tonight Zero Waste Vancouver will formally launch a campaign to prevent the Metro incinerators from going ahead. We will be seeking support from citizens in the region when we appear as a delegation to the Waste Management Committee on July 9th to state our position opposing the incineration plants and presenting recommendations for alternatives.