Of landfills, incinerators and waste processing

By Kate Harries AWARE Simcoe March 3 2012

Switching to bi-weekly garbage pickup is one of the most useful things a municipality can do if it wants to encourage diversion.

That’s because it’s only the rubbish destined for the dump that gets held in-house for two weeks. The recyclables and the organics get picked up every week. This works well for several million people in the GTA and surrounding regions

Yet Simcoe county councillors voted last October against taking this important step.

 Why? There had been “pushback.” Pushback from seniors, the group that’s least likely to generate large amounts of garbage. So what was the problem here?

In a word – diapers.

Many jurisdictions accept diapers as part of the organics stream. Simcoe County does not so these would have been part of the supposedly “dry” garbage that residents would have to hold onto for two weeks. No wonder there was pushback.

Diapers and pet waste make up 24 per cent of the county’s residual garbage.. Getting these categories out of the garbage stream has been done elsewhere. It would significantly reduce the amount destined for Simcoe County’s shrinking landfill capacity.

And it would remove a major – if unmentioned – obstacle standing in the way of biweekly pickup, thus encouraging residents to improve diversion,

There’s plenty of room for improvement: Simcoe County householders are still sending organics (which make up 35 per cent of the contents of the average curbside garbage bag) and recyclables (10.5 per cent) to the dump.

Last year, councillors backed away quickly from their first diversion-boosting plan – user-pay, a tag for every bag of garbage. After then backing away from the next staff proposal, bi-weekly pickup, they chose instead to raise the cost of tags for extra bags (after the one “free” one that’s covered by the waste levy) from $2 to $3. The impact on residents’ waste disposal habits will be minimal as the average county household purchases less than two tags a year for extra bags.

Has there been any change in the list of items the county will collect for diversion? A comparison of the householder “sorting guide” list for 2011 and 2012 shows absolutely no change curbside. Whenever councillors raise the issue of adding to the blue or green boxes, it is dismissed by the county’s top garbage guy Rob McCullough as too expensive There are no markets for plastics, Styrofoam, textiles etc etc. The truth of the matter? It is too expensive to keep on sending this material to the dump.

Our politicians must lead the charge at every opportunity to get the province to make markets – through incentives, research and development, and support for innovative technologies. We’d like to hear a whole lot more from our mayors and deputy mayors on this topic. We’d like them to be annoying. The squeaky wheel gets results. 

Hang on, two years ago, didn’t we all say, no new dumps in Simcoe County?

Well Site 12, the Sunnidale dump in Clearview Township, is an old dump with, McCullough told County Council Thursday, capacity for around 700,000 tonnes of garbage. It’s in a tract of County forest, off Sunnidale Sideroad 12/13, between Concession 12 and County Road 26. To the north lies Wasaga Beach, and the Nottawasaga River runs east and north.

The sign at the entrance says: under development.

Site 12 is due to get a new lease on life. It already has a certificate of approval and a consultant has been retained by the county to get environment ministry approval for a design and operations report. The last county council included Site 12 (and Site 9 near Coldwater, which for now has been put on the back burner) when they approved the Stantec waste management strategy.

But resurrecting these two dumps was meant to be a last resort.

If all else fails.

Thanks to the efforts of committee member Gord McKay, now mayor of Midland, Zero Waste was adopted as a guiding principle for the strategy. So, the strategy says of Sites 9 and 12: “Only develop if landfill capacity is required late in the planning period.”

Instead of being the measure of last resort that was contemplated, this landfill in Clearview now seems to have become a solution.

 What about the new incinerator?

Okay, re-using or recycling plastic or Styrofoam may be expensive. Building our own incinerator (or Energy FromWaste facility)is $75 million plus worth of expensive. How did this idea suddenly get on the public agenda?

Let’s just say that it appeared to come out of left field, after a presentation to Simcoe County’s waste management sub-committee by representatives of Dufferin Coumty, who are building an incinerator and they need more waste than they produce.

Ramara’s Bill Duffy, Clearview’s Ken Ferguson and Tiny’s George Lawrence decided that instead of trucking our garbage out and paying Dufferin, they could have Barrie and Orillia and other municipalities pay Simcoe County to incinerate their waste

This would be the “Made in Simcoe County solution.”

The problem with incinerators is that they require large volumes of waste as feedstock. The pressure to divert and reduce is gone. Goodbye zero waste as a difficult bot worthwhile goal for Simcoe County residents. An entirely different dynamic takes over.

Another problem is that they are prone to unexpected toxic side-effects. The manufacturer of the technology used by Dufferin insists there are no emissions, no hazardous waste left at the end of the cycle. But he would say that, wouldn’t he?

If county councillors are so ill-advised as to go down this road, a rigorous evaluation of health and environmental effects of any technology under consideration should be the first priority. 

But just in terms of dollars and cents, Simcoe County taxpayers should familiarize themselves with the sorry story of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which has been driven close to bankruptcy by a failed incinerator project.

It’s interesting that the motion the sub-committee passed is so vaguely worded as to mean anything. Duffy says the committee voted for a Simcoe County Energy From Waste facility. But that’s not what it says. Which make it really difficult for the public to figure out what’s going on. 

Here’s another interesting thing. County Warden Cal Patterson has belittled the Dufferin project in the past. Two weeks ago, he told the corporate services committee that he had learned from the natural resources ministry that the Dufferin project “is no more” and the best thing is to move forward with a Made-in-Simcoe solution. Then Thursday, the warden clarified. He was misinformed. Dufferin is proceeding, he said. What’s really going on?

The waste management strategy calls for the county to issue a request for proposal for organics processing (composting) capacity this year, and an RFP for recyclables processing in 2013. It’s appropriate that we take care of these materials here in Simcoe County but – as the situation involving a private recycler in Midland has shown – location must be carefully considered. Both of these processes are industrial in nature and should be located in areas designated for such activity.

McCullough told council yesterday that a consultant is working on both proposals. Asked by Midland’s Stephan Kramp whether the intention is to locate such facilities at Site 12, McCullough replied that Site 12 is not the only option.

The county’s sorting guide lists light bulbs as suitable for disposal in the garbage. This is unfortunate. A qualifier is called for. The energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs contain mercury which is highly toxic. Extremely small amounts can contaminate water. No product containing mercury should go to the dump. Instead, dispose of these light bulbs as household hazardous waste.