Evidence of meeting #27 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was materials.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Thank you, Chair.
Ms. Leung, in your opening remarks, you wanted to tell us about your big secret on mixed plastics. You said they were not a problem. I think you ran out of time. I wanted to give you the opportunity to explain the big secret and the innovation on mixed plastics now.
5:05 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Emterra Group
First of all, plastic is very difficult to sort, just because every time you sort, you need to use hand motions. Imagine this for the water bottle you have in front of you. You need to have 27 pieces to make a pound. To get a pound and then sell plastic as a tonne, say, at $400 a tonne, you need millions of what we call “time motions”. In the past, we just could not do it. Now they have optical sorters. They can automatically scan each type of plastic by polymer. This speeds it up: plastic number one, plastic number two, plastic number three, blah, blah, blah, all the way. You have seven grades of plastic sorted out, every one worth something. The lowest is worth about $200 a tonne and the highest about $700 a tonne. That has a positive economic value.
That's why I say that in the past people talked about the problem of plastics. Because of technological advancements, that's history. That will happen to other products too. That's why one of my recommendations is that our government needs to spend time, money, and energy in research and development and innovation. All these technologies are from Europe.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB
That would also address some of the concerns about the packaging industry and their overuse of packaging to some degree. You're saying that becomes a bit less of an issue with your ability to sort that in an optical way now.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB
That's great.
Mr. Hargreave, I want to go back to a statement you made in your opening remarks. You said that innovation and technological advancement can accomplish only so much, yet you talked quite a bit about the economic opportunity of waste diversion.
Why are we losing that economic opportunity? What are the challenges being faced? Typically, industry will look at economic opportunities. Entrepreneurs will look at economic opportunities, as Ms. Leung did with her business, Emterra, and fill those opportunities. If there's an opportunity for economic growth and profitability, they're going to move into that. What is the challenge that is stopping those economic opportunities from being realized?
5:05 p.m.
Director, Policy, Ontario Waste Management Association
I would say that right now you have a failure of our system, which allows resources that we don't need anymore to flow to disposal options. As I said before, you're looking at rates in Michigan and New York that are below $10 a tonne, we understand. When you add in the processing costs that go into sorting materials so that they can be rerouted back into the economy, you can't make the economic case. So I say it's a systems failure because clearly there's value in those resources that we're sending to disposal, but the economy is not taking that into account.
The dynamics need to be changed there. That's about how we put the right economic tool in place so that we're capturing those resources and re-injecting them back into the economy. The problem right now is that the disposal rate is so low that it's tipping everything that way. That has been the case for obviously some time. Over the last two to three decades, at least in Ontario, our disposal rate has remained consistent at 75% of our waste going to disposal.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Yet there obviously are segments where recycling is also very cost-effective for the business generating the waste. I was in the printing industry for many years. You talked about the aluminum being the substrate, the base, for our printing plates. That's something we've been recycling for years and actually at a very profitable level. All paper waste is recycled. Also, back in the film days, we were actually extracting the silver out of the films and breaking them down to have a good cost recovery on them.
I guess that's my question. It's still coming back to the economic model. If the economic model is there such that it's profitable.... Sure, it would have been easier and cheaper for somebody to possibly take those plates or that paper and actually put them in a dump, but there are opportunities there. What is stopping people from engaging in those opportunities? There have to be other barriers, other than “it's just cheaper to do it that way”. Because if you look at the model, there is a profitability that is possible.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
Mr. Toet, we're well over the time limit on that one. I think we'll have to ask for a written response to your question.
We'll move to Mr. McKay, please.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Let me help out, Mr. Toet, because that's exactly where I wanted to go.
I also made note of the fact that it was $10 a tonne to dump in Michigan, and—holy smokes—that's pretty cheap. I see those huge trucks going down Highway 401 each and every day, and it seems to me an incredible waste, from a whole bunch of standpoints.
If the market is failing on the environmental goals of cutting down on waste disposal and if there is a market failure here, how would you set a regulatory framework to, in Ms. Leung's words, tell the market to “smarten up”? Do you say, “You can't dump it for anything less than $20?” Is it $30? What is the signal that would tell the market there is money to be made here?
5:10 p.m.
Director, Policy, Ontario Waste Management Association
Lots of different jurisdictions have used different tools, and many have used multiple tools. In Ontario and in Canada we're using extended producer responsibility, which requires manufacturers to ensure that their products are recycled at end of life, so you're injecting money from those companies into the system to ensure that those materials are properly captured and properly processed.
Other ways you can go—
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
As a consumer, I've been paying for that, haven't I? You were saying in effect that it's an undisclosed tax on me, the consumer, to go to a—
5:10 p.m.
Director, Policy, Ontario Waste Management Association
Again, when it comes to diversion of materials, for most materials you're going to be paying more for the recycling or diversion of those materials than for disposal right now. Absolutely, you are going to be paying more, but, again, when you look at it from an economic perspective and you look at the impact on jobs and GDP, there is a net negative impact of sending all of those resources to waste, so you can look at it from the point of view of a consumer or the person who is paying, but—
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
I agree with the analysis, but I don't get what the appropriate policy tool is to give the market a swift kick in the butt.
5:10 p.m.
Director, Policy, Ontario Waste Management Association
I don't think there is one. There are multiple types of tools you can use. First, a disposal levy would be one of those tools, adding a price at disposal sites or consolidation points. Second, there are also the extended producer responsibility programs into which you inject money and require that those materials be properly recycled. Third, you simply ban materials from going to landfill. Certainly Nova Scotia has done that for organics, and that's one way to try to ensure that you capture the value out of those materials.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
We have finished the second round, and rather than beginning a third round, and considering the fact that we do need to have a short in camera meeting, we're going to end our meeting at this point.
My thanks again to each of the witnesses for being with us by video. Your input has been valuable to our committee.
With that, we'll allow you to disband, and we'll move into our in camera session.
[Proceedings continue in camera]