Environment Committee on Nov. 24th, 2014

[Dale Harley]

Larry, do you want to go first?

[Larry Conrad]

Sure, I can go first.

I think the biggest problem facing us as a municipality is not NIMBY but the “don't build anything, any time, anywhere” syndrome. That has replaced NIMBY. That's why I think it's very important to bring in the social and political action ahead of time.

At the Region of Peel, we do a pretty good job of bringing parties in. We've had an incinerator around for a long time, and it's almost forgotten about. But it's the interaction with the public; you have to deal with them effectively ahead of time. It's a very long and involved process. Some of these projects take three, four, five years of lead time before you even get to letting a contract to get it done.

I think the key answer is that the science is there. Don't try to sell people on the science. Sell people on the political side, the social side of it. No one wants to live next to a stinky place, for sure, but then a lot of people don't even want to live next to a school, either, because of the noise from the kids. It's a long process.

[Dale Harley]

We all have to educate our kids. We all have to dispose of our waste. We all have to take responsibility for it.

Reflecting on Larry's comments, the whole social marketing and social responsibility aspect is I think critical. There are two places where you need to do this outreach with the community. One is prior to the siting of a facility, and that is to make sure that you are cognizant and aware of all the issues or potential issues or concerns that people have. Then you have to share with them the science part, to be able to produce the evidence that shows that what people's expectations are....

People always go to the worst case scenario. Unless you tell them what is actually happening, you're not going to be able to convince them that it's not really all that bad. So fill the void in information by being proactive to get the good news story out.

The second part of that outreach happens once the facility is up and running to give people the opportunity to come and judge for themselves, come and see—or smell, in our case—what it is. I originally had started doing work in Ottawa, and about two or two and a half years ago they asked me to help out in London. The first thing I did when I got down there was to start bringing the media, the public, the politicians, through the plant to see for themselves what it was. Do you know what we discovered? They didn't detect anything. They were surprised. They were impressed. As a result of that, it gave them some confidence in standing up to the political pressure they were getting from a small group of people.

Outreach is important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you.

We'll move to Mr. Bevington, please, for seven minutes.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our presenters. As a former municipal official having to deal with waste disposal, I know exactly the problems that can come into it. I did it in a more isolated location, with less opportunity, but I also spent a fair bit of time looking at solutions.

Years back, I particularly admired a city called Borlänge in Sweden. I don't know if you're familiar with it. There they bought garbage from all different municipalities, collated it in a central location, sorted it, bundled it, and saved it for the winter for their heating purposes. It was very super organized in a very effective way. This was 20 years ago.

You know, I'm troubled too by how Canada has taken a turn away from energy from waste and is only now really coming back to it. There was a lot more opposition to it at one point in time.

We've heard some of that opposition here in front of the committee. We had a presenter saying that basically, when you burn waste for energy, many harmful particulates are released into the atmosphere. Do you agree with that position, or are you confident that the work you do with waste is providing a very clean stream of emissions?

[Larry Conrad]

To answer your question, I can do it in two ways. One is that I think the science has come a long way in the last 20 years, and that's important. But more importantly, waste itself is a relatively clean product as we collect it off the street. I'm not talking about the industrial waste from very exotic metals manufacturing processes and stuff like that, but I do know from when we were trying to do a little small project with a cement company in Mississauga, and I did a lot of background work on emissions, that waste, properly prepared and treated, can be as clean or cleaner than coal. As you go through the science, it comes back to convincing the people, bringing the people into the process early, and teaching them what you know. You're never going to win over 100% of the people, but when you look at it it's quite an accomplishment.

Our incinerator, our EFW plant, energy-from-waste plant, in Brampton, was 20 years-plus in operation and never really had any major issues. There were some minor things like the more compact fluorescent light bulbs they get out there, the more chances of getting mercury into the airstream. It's a very volatile heavy metal. It will evaporate in the high heat fairly easily, but you can treat that.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

Do you have sensors in the smokestack? This is what they did in Borlänge. They had sensors in the smokestack, and they could identify when somebody put the wrong material into their garbage. They actually collected the garbage with computerized vehicles and would be able to trace the garbage stream back to the originators of it. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of tonnes of garbage they were moving, but these people were so well organized. Do you anticipate that this is a way that Canadian garbage should go, in this very organized fashion that will actually allow processors like yourself to be able to determine where any delinquent garbage comes from?

[Larry Conrad]

Once you take into account the sort of reuse-reduction aspect, there will always be material left over. In the waste strain, that material is, I really think, the future of waste management in energy production. I can't say that we would be able to trace that waste back to individual generators, but yes, most modern facilities—in fact, all that I've ever seen—have devices in the stacks that monitor the plume. They monitor what's going on in the burning chamber, so people are alerted right away as to when there's an issue in the process. I think it can be done safely. Around the world it's being done safely, and we've certainly done it safely in Peel.

[Dale Harley]

If I might just add, when we talk about energy from waste, not all of it involves incineration. Anaerobic digestion, for example, which my firm also does, is a good example of that. That being said, while in our experience incineration is a fairly expensive solution, it still has a place in dealing with the residual products that are produced through composting. For example, there are plastic bags—I heard Larry talk a little bit about that—with a cement kiln. We've actually run tests with several cement facilities as well and the material being used or burned is actually a cleaner source of energy than others.

The other thing is that we also use what we call 20-plus material out of our Ottawa plant to help fire kilns.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

I wanted to ask a couple of questions about funding for developing good waste streams. I don't know if you in Peel have used the FCM green municipal fund for any of the work that you did over the years, or if you used the gas tax money when it was strictly for green projects. Have you taken advantage of any of those streams? Do you see that there's any kind of fund available today that would encourage municipalities to put more effort and money into waste management?

[Larry Conrad]

Yes, sure, I've actually applied for two GMF funds. One was an earlier fund around mixing waste with sewage sludge. But currently we're doing an agricultural research study with all the municipal producers in Ontario. We have all the major source-separated organics producers producing compost in that, and that is now in its first year of funding. We have used the GMF funds as well for some of our public education programs in the past, so it is a very important source of funding for municipal projects.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

And the gas tax, is there no question on it?

[Larry Conrad]

I can't answer on the gas tax. I'm sorry. As for our own waste management, we don't use that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

We'll go to Mrs. Ambler.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to both of you, Dale and Larry, for being here. I thought your presentations were absolutely fascinating. I'm delighted that you're here, Larry, from the Region of Peel. I knew you would be able to tell us about some of the great things that are being done in Mississauga, Brampton, and Caledon, so I'm very happy you were able to make it here.

I'd like to get into the weeds a little bit if that's okay with you, weeds, leaves, or whatever, and talk about those. I'd like you to tell us a bit more about the composting facilities. I know I was very impressed to hear about them, how they work, and to see one of them in action.

Specifically I'd like it if you could tell us about the different rules and criteria for what can go in a green bin and how your facilities are different that way. Mr. Carrie talked about plastic bags and diapers. In Peel region those are not allowed in our compost bins. I'm assuming the reason is that when you're creating soil to sell back to consumers, it wouldn't work with plastic bags and diapers and other things like that.

Also, in municipalities or regions where they do accept things like diapers and plastic bags in their green bins, my understanding is that they are not actually composted. What happens is they form the top layer of a landfill somewhere. I guess it's sort of like a lesser evil. Maybe you could tell me if that's true. That's just something I've heard. There are so many misconceptions about composting and how we look after organics. I'm hoping you can talk about that.

[Larry Conrad]

Sure.

In Peel we don't accept material that's in a plastic bag, although we do accept material that's in a biodegradable bag. That could be a biodegradable plastic or it could be a biodegradable fibre. A lot of people just wrap their stuff in newspapers.

That being said, we do get out in the community and promote that and explain it. We give examples, and we've actually submitted samples to residents for them to look at. We do that so we can produce a cleaner compost. Getting plastics out of a product that you're sending to Grandma and Grandpa's yard can be very difficult. That's where the bulk of our compost has been going—soils in the household, in the backyard garden. We don't accept diapers. We don't accept kitty litter. We don't accept pet waste or feminine hygiene products. Some of that we don't do just as a perception thing. When we're selling material, it's not very socially acceptable to say our compost was made using human waste. That being said, there's nothing wrong with it; it's just a marketing thing.

When you compare our system to the systems in the cities of Toronto, York and some others, in which they do co-collect those materials, they're using a different process. They are using the anaerobic digestion process. They are basically collecting the material and separating it off, so they can clean off the plastics. Dale can talk to this, because I know Orgaworld worked with a concrete company to take some of the plastics from their processing and use them as a fuel, but those plastics get sourced off and they just get sent to the landfill because there's really nothing else you can do with them.

In Peel, we have a two-stage system. We have two compost plants that are the first line, to which our materials go. One technology was made in Holland, and one technology was made in Germany. They're both box systems. We mix equal parts of yard waste and organic waste. That material goes into those boxes for seven days; it comes out, and then we send it to our second-line composting plant, which is actually on an old landfill site, the Chinguacousy landfill site. There we use a Gore windrow technology. The Gore cover helps to protect the compost from the environment, and the composting goes on underneath in the environment. That is our curing facility. It stays there six to eight weeks, and then we're able to screen that and produce a good product.

We produce a product that is intended to be sold as a soil amendment. You know, Grandma and Grandpa like to use a clean product. There are different classes of compost, depending on what you want to use it for, and we sell an agricultural grade as well, which is an inch and a half minus and a much rougher material. It has some of the ping-pong balls and dog toys in it and we sell that to the farmers. The farmers are okay with that. Not a lot of it is there, but it's just a different classification.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you. My children learned to ski on that hill in Chinguacousy Park.

Dale, I'd like to ask you about landfills. You mentioned methane gas. I didn't realize that it was worse than other toxins when organics are in landfills. I've heard people say, “Well, you know, if I put food waste in the garbage, it'll just compose in the landfill”, so they don't see the importance of separating it out. Maybe you could tell us a bit about that.

[Dale Harley]

I'm not an expert on methane gas in landfills, but I do want to go back to landfills, because you had made a comment about some people producing a compost that is not of a certain quality, so it ends up being a landfill cover. I'd like to start off by saying that the compost that Orgaworld produces is AA compost. It is not used for landfill cover, and 100% of it is sold back to the agricultural community. We actually have people on waiting lists trying to get more. They want us to produce more compost. They want it that badly because it's such a good product.

I'd like to stress that plastic being added does not have an impact on the quality of the compost, because our process ensures that it is removed. It does not end up being part of the product. For example, the Ministry of the Environment actually introduced some new guidelines about what your contaminants are allowed to be, and they're going down to 1%. So you have very little or none in there.

The one advantage about plastics and receiving plastics is that they increase the ease and reduce the “yuck” factor. We find that, for example, in York and in London, two communities that have the highest number of homes participating and the highest amount of material put into their green bin program. Remember, our objective should be diversion from landfill sites, so anything you can do to make it easier to get people to participate in a program is a positive thing.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

That's good to know. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

We'll come back for another question perhaps later on.

Mr. McKay.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

It was our weekend to look after the grandkids, so I'm a little bit more familiar with diaper waste than I care to be. But I have no idea where it went and probably don't want to know either.

Mr. Harley, do you actually peel off any gas from your product?

[Dale Harley]

In the case of our two existing facilities in London and here in Ottawa, no. They are aerobic digesters as opposed to anaerobic digesters, so as a result of that, we're not doing that here. We do that actually—

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

If you had to do it over again, would you do it that way or not?

[Dale Harley]

To be honest, probably not, from the point of view that we are very successful at helping municipalities remove waste from the waste stream using the technologies and methodologies that we are using today.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

But what happens to the GHGs that are generated by the stuff you have in your shop?