Environment Committee on Nov. 24th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

This is meeting number 39 of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. We're continuing our study today on the management of municipal solid waste and industrial materials. We have two witnesses with us today, Mr. Dale Harley, general manager of Orgaworld, Ottawa, and from the Region of Peel, Larry Conrad, manager of waste operations.

We normally begin with a 10-minute opening statement followed by questions from our committee members, so we'll go with both opening statements first and then proceed with the questions.

We'll begin with Mr. Dale Harley, please.

[Dale Harley, General Manager, Ottawa, Orgaworld Canada]

Let me start off by saying thank you for the opportunity to come and address the standing committee. My name is Dale Harley and I am the general manager of Orgaworld Canada—not just Ottawa but the whole shooting match we have here.

We're a Netherlands-based company that uses innovative technologies to process organic waste into high-quality compost that is sold to the agricultural community to help rehabilitate soil and replace the need for chemical fertilizers. We are truly closing the loop when it comes to waste management.

Orgaworld currently operates two plants in Ontario, one in London and one in Ottawa, that are permitted to process up to 300,000 tonnes of source-separated organics per year. We are Ontario's single largest processor of SSO. We are in the process of expanding across Canada and we hope to have two new plants operating, in B.C. and Alberta, in the near future.

According to the 2013 report by the Conference Board of Canada, Canada ranked lowest internationally of 17 OECD countries for our record on waste management. Nationally the total amount of residential and non-residential non-hazardous waste sent for disposal in 2010 was a whopping 25 million tonnes.

For the purpose of this presentation, I'd like to focus on the management of organics as opposed to talking about all waste streams.

According to a 2006 Natural Resources Canada report, there were 6.7 million tonnes of organic waste produced in Canada, second only to paper. That was back in 2006. Since that time, it's my understanding, organics now represent the largest single stream of waste coming into the waste stream system.

Across Canada there are significant variances among provinces as to how they deal with this organic waste. Ontario and Quebec have general non-mandatory goals for diverting materials from landfills, with a net goal of approximately 60% diversion. One of the primary mechanisms used to achieve this has been the diversion of organics from the municipal sector. But the overall diversion goals have not been achieved, and the industrial, commercial and institutional sector continues to generate significant quantities of organics that are landfilled. Various municipalities, such as the City of Toronto, have gone above that 60% goal and self-imposed a target of 70% diversion.

Nova Scotia has had an organics ban for almost 20 years now and is really a leader in Canada in this area. Other maritime provinces are beginning to impose similar regulations, and British Columbia is now moving towards an organics ban as well. Manitoba and Saskatchewan have fledgling regulatory systems in place, while Alberta's promotion of organics diversion is driven by the specified gas emitters regulation, which seeks to reduce greenhouse emissions through a cap-and-trade system. In this respect, a number of organic diversion projects have been developed to create offset credits in the marketplace.

By comparison, the European Union has made significant progress in diverting organics from their landfills. In 1999 the EU adopted a landfill directive that called for a reduction of organics to 35% of their 1995 tonnes by either 2016 or 2020. In the U.K. they instituted a landfill tax that was to rise to $86 a tonne by 2011, and in fact that tax today stands at $144 per tonne. In Germany they introduced a disposal restriction of less than 3% organics.

What Canada needs is a national ban on organics going into landfills. This ban would not only be good for the environment but would also be good for the economy and the reduction of greenhouse gases.

One of the strongest points in favour of the zero-waste concept is the impact on job creation. According to a European Commission study, 400,000 jobs could be created in Europe if they implemented the current EU waste policies. The environment commissioner, Janez Potocnik, said:

We need to see waste as a resource—and to bury that resource in the ground is worse than short-sighted. This report shows that waste management and recycling can make a big contribution to economic growth and job creation.

That report actually went on to find that four jobs could be created for every 10,000 tonnes per year of compost that was produced.

Looking at it from a greenhouse gas perspective, waste management is the fourth-largest contributor to greenhouse gases. ln terms of greenhouse gases, there are a number of benefits to organic diversion.

First of all, organics in landfills create methane, which is actually 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. While many landfills attempt to collect and destroy this methane gas before emission, it's not possible to collect it all. Generally, landfills successfully recover only about half of all the methane they produce. The end result is all of that entering our atmosphere.

Next, landfills are generally further away from municipal hubs than are localized organics processing facilities or handling facilities. Generally, the trucking and diesel fuel consumption associated with hauling to the landfill is greater than diverting to nearer organics facilities.

Also, organics that enter a landfill provide no nutrient value. Organics that are converted into compost, at least at Orgaworld, can be used to displace petroleum-based fertilizers, which is a significant greenhouse gas reduction strategy.

The U.S. EPA estimates that diverted food waste can actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 0.42 tonnes equivalent of carbon dioxide per imperial ton of food. For California alone, looking at their food waste bulk, the total potential emission reduction is nearly six million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. Given that a typical vehicle emits 4.7 tonnes of CO₂ per year, the food waste processing in California could thus potentially reduce the equivalent of 1.28 million cars' worth of greenhouse gas emissions. We would expect the same here in Canada, given our equivalent population.

ln closing, I'd like to thank the standing committee for the opportunity to speak on this important topic. There is definitely an opportunity for the federal government to take a leadership role in waste management and the banning of organics from landfill sites. Such a ban would be good for the economy and for reducing greenhouse gases.

When appropriate, I would be pleased to answer any questions you might have. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you very much, Mr. Harley.

We move now to Mr. Conrad for a 10-minute opening statement, please.

[Larry Conrad, Manager, Waste Operations, Region of Peel]

I thank the committee for inviting me as well to address you today. It's certainly an honour.

I was told that I would have about seven minutes to talk. I've created about 30 minutes of PowerPoint slides, being a typical municipal employee, because that's what we do, right?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Larry Conrad]

I will get through what I can in seven minutes.

I've chosen to tell you about some of the things we do that are newer in our region or stuff we've undertaken that is unique.

We are a large municipality and consequently have a rather large budget for our operations, but really, we don't do anything that's different from what a small municipality does. We collect waste, we recycle it, and we reuse it where we can. Finally, for what we can't do any of the above to, we dispose of it, in the past at an incinerator, an EFW plant, and currently at a landfill site. Our scale affords us the ability to do some things that smaller municipalities can't do, but in the end, we're charged with handling our waste in an environmentally responsible and economically prudent fashion.

To give you a bit of a background on the kind of waste we handle in the region, in 2013 we handled roughly 510,000 tonnes. This won't add up, so don't bother adding it up, but roughly 90,000 tonnes of that was organics. Those organics were made up of yard waste, leaves, and the organics, the SSO, that we collect from our municipal residents. About 100,000 tonnes of that was blue box material, while 50,000 of that was from our CRCs. We have a network of CRCs. About 60% of that 50,000 was recyclable material. Finally, we disposed of about 240,000 tonnes via landfill.

The Region of Peel has a population of about 1.3 million. We're the second-largest municipality in the GTA. We span 1,200 square kilometres. We have a series of six CRCs now. We have an energy-from-waste facility. We're planning a new energy-from-waste facility. We have a MRF, a materials recovery facility. We have a landfill-gas-to-power facility. We do all of this under a strategy. Our strategy is a world without waste. That's what our vision would be.

I realize that's somewhat difficult to get to, but we've adopted our hierarchy on the 4Rs. We've based that on a balanced approach among social, environmental, and financial considerations, but more important is getting a range of input from our stakeholders and reflecting what's best for our residents.

We've had a number of key accomplishments over the last years. We're moving to a three-container system and getting away from a weekly bag collection. That will allow us to increase the amount of organics by between 10,000 and 20,000 tonnes a year. We're looking at building a new MRF. We're going to build a new organics facility. Also, we're going to build a new EFW plant.

Our vision is a world without waste. Most of our waste, we can reuse—

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

I think I see a couple of people looking around and wondering about the acronyms you're throwing around with impunity. I get most of them, but to be honest I've missed some.

[Larry Conrad]

I'm sorry. A MRF is a materials recovery facility.

[An hon. member]

I thought it was a cartoon character.

[Larry Conrad]

That's a Smurf.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

I thought it was multi-use recreational facility.

[Larry Conrad]

The CRC is a community recycling centre.

What else did I miss? EFW, energy-from-waste facility.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Okay, thank you.

[Larry Conrad]

You're welcome.

Our biggest undertaking currently is our PERC project.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Larry Conrad]

Of course, we talk about this all the time, so we're used to it. It's called the Peel energy recovery centre. That is to replace an old incinerator. It's going to be built for the private sector to handle roughly 300,000 tonnes of garbage, and be owned by the Region of Peel. We'll be able to use our garbage as a resource, rather than burying it in a landfill. We have decided it's going to be a mass burn combustion unit. There are about 500 mass burn facilities around the world, so we're definitely not inventing anything new.

One of the best things I wanted to promote on that PERC, other than the environmental benefits of not landfilling and the energy production, is the number of jobs we're going to create: 300 construction jobs and upwards of 40 direct and 120 indirect jobs. In waste management, you'll always have waste. It's good for the environment, it's good for energy, but it's good to keep people employed.

We have three composting facilities. No acronyms there. We produce compost from our organic waste. Much like Orgaworld, we market it to a number of facilities. A couple of the cool and exciting things we're doing there is that we have gone in with almost every major producer of material collected from the curbside in Ontario, Orgaworld included, as well as the Ministry of the Environment in Ontario, Dr. Lambert Otten from the University of Guelph, and the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association. What that's about is developing agricultural field trials to help us market material into the agricultural community. That's allowed us to open markets that weren't there before. As I said, this is all over southwestern and central Ontario. It's not just confined to the Region of Peel.

Before that, we also worked on using our compost in the Filtrexx line of products, which use compost as filter equivalents. When you spray down for roadside seeding, it's a filtration for erosion control, living walls, where they have a side of a cliff they're trying to revegetate. It was a very exciting thing, and that was in conjunction with the University of Guelph.

I could go on, but I think I'm close to the end of my presentation. I wanted to leave you with where we should go from here. Every one of you sitting around the table is an expert in the field of waste management. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees on what we need to do. More needs to be done to address the political and social issues surrounding waste management. Bringing together lots of successful projects takes a lot of committed citizens. A lot of people have input into a lot of alternate technologies. Talk about energy from waste siting, as in the Port Hope area, the last one sited in Ontario; the social and political inputs are very definitely almost as important as the engineering inputs.

As Dale suggested, we need to look more at organics. Organics can be used for a lot of things besides compost. You'll never get away from composting plants, but you can use composting in an anaerobic digester—AD, I would say, but I've already been there—and co-digest it with waste water sludges and use the fuel maybe not to generate electricity, but for transportation. We're going to use natural gas-fired vehicles for our collection in our new contract, getting away from the use of diesel.

As reported on November 21, a poll of 1,044 residents across the country support EFW. This is good news because I really believe that the future of waste management is in energy production. We all know about recycling MRFs, and that's good, but how do you get that next percentile? We're on our way to trying to get to a 90% diversion from landfill rate. We're at about 50% now without EFW, but a lot of that can be done by using our stuff as energy from waste.

Waste plastic is an issue that we hear about around the world. There are uses for waste plastics, but not all waste plastics can be reused. A lot of research needs to go there.

We need to look at more research, both non-partisan and company-specific. It's important. I talked about two research projects this afternoon. We need to do a bit more research on how to use waste.

Economics, of course, needs to be addressed. New and innovative solutions take time and money to develop, but they can replace many of the jobs lost in the manufacturing sector, and I think that's important. As a federal government we need to promote industry. One of the things about waste is that as long as you have people, there is going to be waste. That waste needs to be properly managed, and the waste can do valuable jobs. As I've said to many people who have wanted to listen to me, I've lived through about three recessions through my time at Peel. A lot of that is based on the fact that waste is a resource, and we always need to deal with waste appropriately.

With that, I thank you for the time. I hope I didn't go over my seven minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thanks, Mr. Conrad.

It looks as though you've come up with a triple-E plan for solid waste—environment, energy, and employment—so I think we're on the right track there.

We're going to move to our first round of questions.

Mr. Carrie.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank both witnesses for being here today to discuss this really important issue.

One of the things I'd like to ask you about.... There is a lot of Nimbyism when you're talking about the different plants. In reality, most people at the table would agree that what you're talking about really is the future. We need to start going there more.

Your company composts organic materials, also plastic bags and diapers. Does this make the composting process odorous and smelly?

[Dale Harley]

I take it that's directed toward Orgaworld.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Sure.

[Dale Harley]

The answer to that is no. As I said, Orgaworld has two plants. One was our first plant in Canada, in London, Ontario. I'll admit that when we brought our technology and our operational processes into Canada, we did not take into consideration a number of things. One of those things was the expectation with respect to odour, and the second was the not-in-my-backyard mentality.

In the case of London we did have some problems; I admit that. We've invested millions of dollars. We have rectified the situation in London, and if anyone is familiar with the area now, the last time Orgaworld was in the news was about 18 months ago. It had to do with the fact that we had pleaded guilty on a charge of emitting an odour. Guess what? We did it; we paid our fine.

In the media reports the tone of the coverage was that, yes, this was a charge from back in 2010, and there are no problems at the plant anymore.

The second plant we opened up was in Ottawa, and we took our lessons learned—or the fact that we had the crap beat out of us—to heart. We did a much better job of reaching out to the community to explain what it was that we were going to be doing and how we were going to be doing it. I'm very pleased to say that in Ottawa our odour complaints in the last four years that we have been operating come to a grand total of zero.

I'll go back to our London experience. I'll admit there's still a small group of people, about five households, and it doesn't matter what I do, I will never convert them. I used to be a politician like you guys. I have the experience, I have the scars, and I just confess that they're not going to be turned over.

But in answer to your question, no.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Perfect.

I'm just curious. How do you minimize the odours?

[Dale Harley]

In London and in Ottawa we have a state-of-the-art odour abatement system that includes a wide variety of technologies. First of all, the whole process is managed inside an enclosed facility that is under negative air pressure. So if you were at one of our doors, you'd actually have to give it a little extra tug to get it open, because everything is being sucked in.

The odour is being sucked in through a series of biofilters, bio-scrubbers, and ammonia scrubbers that remove all of the noxious odours. The odour that is emitted is really a rest odour that comes off of our biofilters, which is like a wet hardwood. Some people describe it as a walk in the woods after a rain. Other people think it smells like potato water. It's very light, very fleeting. Of course, then it goes up through a 40-metre stack and is dispersed.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Excellent.

You mentioned too that it's the fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. What are the biggest challenges the municipalities face, and the provinces and territories, in improving the situation we have here in Canada? You mentioned that overall we're not doing very good.

Maybe I'll throw this out to both of you. What are the biggest challenges facing our provinces, territories, and municipalities on improving?