York’s organic waste sent below the border
June 19, 2008
York Region plans to truck 9,000 tonnes of green bin waste to New York for disposal as there are no local firms to process it. Instead of being composted, as diligent householders expect when they separate their trash, the organic waste is heading to Niagara Falls, N.Y., where it is incinerated and turned into energy, said Erin Mahoney, York’s commissioner of environmental services.
The situation came about because GSI Environment, the contracted composting plant in Chicoutimi, had “operating issues” with Quebec’s environment ministry. It was forced to curtail its operations, leaving York Region to seek a new processor, she said yesterday.
Diverting organic waste is turning out to be a bigger challenge than municipalities anticipated. Toronto has had to delay introducing the green bin program in apartment buildings because it can’t find anyone to process the extra waste. “There’s a bit of a gap in processing capacity for the material that everyone is doing a great job at separating at source,” Mahoney said.
As of last September, residents in York’s nine municipalities were participating in the green bin program. Because of the Quebec processing “hiccup,” since March about 200 tonnes a week has been going to Covanta Energy in New York, where it is converted to energy through a combustion process. “We’d like to be processing it as organic material, but we prefer energy-from-waste to landfill,” said Mahoney.
York has been paying Covanta $65 for each tonne of organics it takes - down from $135 a tonne that it was paying the Quebec plant. The Covanta contract expires at the end of the year. By then, a London, Ont., organic processing plant is expected to have higher capacity.
“Instead of being composted, as diligent householders expect when they separate their trash”
Would you have preferred that it be dumped instead into a landfill. At the very least, you could have commended York region for doing something useful with their waste after the Environment, the contracted composting plant in Chicoutimi, went bankrupt (Operational issues, indeed?!).
In my opinion, there is only going to be so much compost that any individual or City will be able to use. Energy conversion is the only other method of dealing with the waste in a proper fashion (taking into account that whatever is being done to do is more than likely a decade or 2 behind what’s used in Europe.).
Toronto has had to delay their Green bin program (AGAIN!!) because of the typical waffling of City Councillors, public service workers and private interest groups that are interfering with what needs to be done. I admit, it’s a big project, but in the end it’s only so big as the people in charge of resolving the problem make it out to be.
Mayor Miller’s reluctance to even consider building an waste conversion plant within the City is an embarrassment, when you remember he had no problems authorizing the purchase of a landfill site near London, ON.
NIMBY-ism is the biggest problem still facing Toronto when it comes to facing reality.