Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Again I, too, thank you for the opportunity of addressing the committee here today.
My name is Michael Walters. I've been in the waste management business for over 40 years and in the last four years I've been with Tomlinson, R.W. Tomlinson. Over that period of time, I started back with the Ministry of the Environment in 1972 looking at permitting landfill sites. Then over that period of years I've been in involved in siting new landfill sites, designing landfills, and permitting in municipal as well as private sector operations. In the last little bit, I'm involved with the operation of private sector waste diversion operations which—I have to caution myself; I have to speak a little slower for my interpreter there—I'm quite excited about.
Now, as a guy who has been in the landfill business for over 40 years, I've always had an eye for the waste diversion side of life. I like getting involved in things that actually do something or do something tangible. I'm going to tell you about some of that here today in the time that I have. I'm going to focus primarily on the innovations and best management practices that we at Tomlinson have implemented specifically in the construction and demolition recycling area.
But before I get to that, I'll tell you a little bit about our company. It's quite interesting. I've worked with big companies, and Tomlinson is a big company that is unique. It's a family-run business. The quick overview is that they started operation in 1969, and we provide heavy civil construction services, environmental services, road construction services, road maintenance services, and site development services to our clients based in the institutional, municipal, commercial, and industrial sectors.
Tomlinson also provides construction equipment, construction material such as crushed aggregate, and you'll see hot asphalt and ready mix. Our primary area of operation is in the national capital region, but we're in eastern Ontario, we're in the Gatineau, and we're actually expanding.
Tomlinson is staffed with over 1,200 employees consisting of professional engineers, chartered accountants, technologists, technicians, highly skilled trades people, and clerical staff. Our size and our financial strength gives us the experience and expertise to manage many projects. The other thing is that being privately owned and operated gives us the flexibility to respond quickly to our clients' changing needs.
So now that I've given you an overview of our company, let me tell you about this initiative that we pioneered in the Ottawa area within our construction demolition waste. I call it C and D, construction demolition.
Back in about 2006 was when I first got very interested in this, and Tomlinson was already involved in doing this. Back in 2006, the City of Ottawa presented to council just an overview of the tonnage history in the City of Ottawa. At that time, there were over one million tonnes of waste generated within this area, of which about 320,000 tonnes was residential, coming from your homes. But there was also 240,000 tonnes of construction demolition material that was being generated, and the remaining 440,000 tonnes per year was industrial, commercial, and institutional. We hear a lot about it, but industrial, commercial, and institutional are our schools and our hospitals.
We're involved in all those areas that I mentioned, all waste diversion, but in the time that I have I'm going to zero in on the C and D market and tell you what we've been able to do. Based on the breakdown I just presented, over 25% of the waste that's generated within the City of Ottawa is from the construction demolition sector.
We at Tomlinson saw this as an important market to enter into back in 1997. We designed, permitted, and built our construction demolition recycling facility that complements our roll-off division that services this market. Our C and D, or construction demolition, recycling facility is located at the Springhill Landfill, which is within the city of Ottawa.
Over the past 17 years since the operation started, we've been able to perfect the process to the point where we historically divert over 70% of the material that comes to us. That's 70%.
This diverted material consists of white wood that is used in the agricultural and horticultural industry. It's especially used for cattle bedding. It has to meet a certain criteria or a certain spec to be used in that area. My other wood products we crate into a biomass that is used in the energy production industry. We recover ferrous and non-ferrous metal that's used in the scrap metal industry and we recover cardboard that we send to our material recovery facility in Carp for baling into the market. We take in concrete and brick and we crush it and make it into aggregate. Gypsum we recover and process and it's used in the agricultural area for soil amendment.
We as a company continue to see the opportunity in the C and D market in the Ottawa area. With over 240,000 tonnes being produced annually or 24% of the waste that we all produce in this municipality, we know there's a significant portion of waste stream that is still being sent to the landfill site. In order to increase the amount of diversion from the still unrecycled portion of the Ottawa C and D market waste stream, we at Tomlinson are currently permitting a new construction and demolition recycling facility that will be located in the west end of the city at our Carp waste recovery facility. This proposed new plant has already received a site plan approval from the City of Ottawa and we plan to receive the required Ministry of the Environment environmental compliance approval within the next few weeks. When this plant is constructed and operational in 2015 we will be able to receive and process and recycle an additional 100,000 tonnes to 150,000 tonnes of C and D material annually within this market. We are excited about this new initiative as it has the potential to increase our current diversion.
Our plant in Springhill takes in 51,000 tonnes and we divert 32,000 tonnes of that. With this additional plant that could come on, that 32,000 tonnes represents about 3.2% of the total material recycled within the city of Ottawa. If we are able to attract our tonnage, which we know is out there, to this new plant we'll increase our total waste diverted for the city of Ottawa in this area up to 10% to 13%. When you think of that it's a significant contribution. The nice thing about it is that it's not only good for the environment but it also makes economic and financial sense. We're quite excited about that. That's a nice marriage when you can have something to divert this and take this material and reuse it and have it financially stand on its own.
That's what I've presented here today. Later on this week you'll get the information that I've presented here, which gives you more specifics. It breaks it down to the different components of how much we recycle.