Environment Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2014

[Bob Mills]

It's heavy metals, and dioxins and furans, and so on that you can't detect, that you can't get out of that burning stream, that incineration stream. Above all, no matter what we do and whatever method we end up with, we must sort at the front end. Wherever it's financially feasible to take a plastic and turn it into something of value, we should do it. Metal, whatever, we should always sort fully. The new technologies that are coming forward are going to make that a lot easier. You need to sort it at the front end and recycle where you can, but there's always going to be something left, and that something that's left is what's dangerous and what we need to be able to refine.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Mr. Bevington.

Mr. Sopuck for seven minutes please.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

I don't know if you recall, Bob, but you and I served on a panel at the Manning Centre a few years ago, along with Michelle Rempel. It was great fun and I greatly admire the work that you do.

You talked a fair bit about research and development needs that perhaps the federal government could be involved in. At least I think you were inferring that. Can you elaborate in some detail on what you see as the research and development needs to expand the use of this technology?

[Bob Mills]

First of all, to start at the front end, is the sorting process. That needs new technologies. There are all kinds of inventors out there. We're pretty good at that. I think we need encouragement and funding to help that out.

Then I think there's the process itself. We need to refine that process. I mentioned the valley of death. When you have something, you have a test plant, it's working. Now it's working, and you've fixed the bugs in it. That takes 10 years. Now you go into actually commercializing it. Who is going to buy this? That's where your big problem comes in.

Anything we can do to help what are basically small businesses to get from that invention stage to developing test plants, to building a prototype, and then to the commercialization.... A lot of that is salesmanship. A lot of that is going out to various governments in different places. All of that takes support and cash. Anything we can do to help them with writing down some of their costs in invention, anything we can do there in a tax....

I don't like just handing out money, because so much of that is just a waste. I think SDTC does a good job of vetting, following, and reporting, but they have a limited amount of money to do that with. There's where we could put more in. That's a federal project.

I think, as well, the federal government needs to provide the leadership. They need to tell the provinces and the municipalities, “Hey, we're behind your going into new projects to get this whole thing going.”

As I mentioned, I'm most familiar with the Alberta carbon program, where there's a fair amount of money put in for companies that put out too much carbon, and they pay a penalty: $15 a tonne. That fund is growing rapidly and is being used for environmental projects.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

A lot of what you just described relates to marketing, communication, leadership, and so on. Can we infer, then, that the actual technology is basically there for gasification?

[Bob Mills]

I would say yes, it's there, and I would say there are a few leaders. There are a great many people who think they know the technology, but they haven't gone through the steps. Until you get a plant that's up and running, and as I said, that can take 10 years or more, you really don't know what you have. It's great on paper sometimes.

There are probably at least a hundred companies out there that have an idea. I couldn't believe how many there were. But you have to go through the steps. That's where the government could come in and provide the initiatives.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

You mentioned, regarding the residue from gasification, that the material could be used in roads and road building. What other uses are there for the residue from the incineration process?

[Bob Mills]

Remember, first of all, you have to take out the heavy metals. You have to take out anything that's a contaminant. The high temperature will destroy the dioxins and furans, the bad stuff, but then you end up with.... I just brought a piece of my favourite slag. The poor people who served with me probably saw me hanging around with this slag all the time. I have a ring made out of this slag. It's hard stuff.

This can be ground up and used in road crush. It can also be used in ornaments. It can be used in road curbing. It can be used in any number of things. The most important thing is that when you analyze that, it's cleaner than a Coke bottle in terms of what's in there. That's a usable material.

The other things you get out of there are fertilizers. You take the nitrogen, recombine it, and produce fertilizer. The phosphorus, you can take that out. In terms of the water, you can take that out. You have all these usable materials that now are saleable products. The heavy metals are saleable. Everything that you take out of that garbage is now saleable. That makes it a resource, not a cost.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Again, you're inferring or implying that economics are not the problem here, that this is financially feasible. Is that the case in every situation? Is it just obstreperousness on the part of municipalities that this is not being done, or are there cases where this simply just does not work financially?

[Bob Mills]

When you talk to municipalities, it's very fascinating. I've talked to many. They come up with the strangest reasons for not doing this. I have turned that into a presentation I call the fear of change. Why are bureaucrats afraid of it? Why are politicians afraid of it? Why is the public afraid of it? To summarize, basically the bureaucrat is afraid to recommend this because he'll lose his job if it doesn't work. A politician is afraid to do it because he might not get elected if he promotes a lemon and, of course, the public for the most part don't understand and can easily become frightened by some new approach. As a result we stay with the same old way of doing things.

I guarantee that landfills are ticking time bombs and will come back to haunt us in Canada. We're very young, but in older places such as Europe, they are a nightmare to deal with. The cost is beyond all. You can't imagine what some municipalities are being sued for.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Mr. Sopuck.

We'll move now to Mr. McKay for seven minutes.

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

Hi, Bob, John McKay here. It's good to see you again.

[Bob Mills]

Hi, John.

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

You're a poster child for post-retirement MPs.

[Bob Mills]

Hey, I'm still fighting garbage so, you know, it's 40 years later.

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

Yes. Old MPs don't die, they simply recycle themselves, is that what you're saying?

[Bob Mills]

That's exactly right, yes. You don't want to turn into slag or something.

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

Well, there's a lot of slagging that goes on here, there's no question about that.

[Bob Mills]

We'll get into that after.

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

I was thinking about what you were saying and thinking about the front-end sorting. It seems to me that if I look at how we've kind of gone through the three Rs and in a certain way kind of adapted to it, we actually haven't gone back to the front end and looked at how products could be sorted in a better way, re-streamed and redirected, shall we say.

I was wondering whether you could comment first from the standpoint of the householder putting the product on the curb, if you will, and then from the standpoint of whoever picks it up to direct or redirect it.

[Bob Mills]

Well, I would like to think that people treat garbage the way people should treat garbage, in other words, sort it and so on. The sad part, what brought me back to reality on that whole thing, is when I opened garbage bags. If you want an experience, go to a landfill and open 25 garbage bags and see what you find inside.

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

I'll pass on that thanks.

[Bob Mills]

It's amazing. It's a fairly smelly job, but you'd really be interested in what you find. I mean, we even found a chopped up bicycle in a garbage bag. There's a huge amount of stuff that isn't recycled properly. The technology is there. Rip open the bag, sort out the metal, sort out the batteries, discover anything that can be recycled. Again it comes down to the cost of that. As the technology develops, the cost gets lower and lower, but you have to develop that technology. As I said, I believe it's out there. I think that has already been invented. But you still have stuff that you have to deal with.

Composting is one thing for some of it, but now you get into what about the air, what about the soil, so it seems to me that keeping that garbage out of the ground is the only way you're going to deal with it. I believe it can be done economically and I think there's money to be made from garbage. Countries are proving that. The companies are proving that. But you have to get the plants built.

We've done a lot of talk. I can't even count how many public hearings I've been at about garbage, from the 1970s and on. There's a lot of talk, but not many people are taking much action. We take another piece of land and have all the hearings, then it goes ahead and we bury it.

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

I was standing in my driveway a week or so ago—we live in a cul-de-sac—watching this guy in a pickup truck come down our street looking for stuff out on the curb. I was kind of surprised when he stopped and picked up some stuff and threw it in the back of his truck. I was thinking about that as getting greater access on the part of the private entrepreneurs to the value that is in garbage and whether there is a way in which they can access the materials so it can be recycled more directly into more valuable products.