Waste-to-energy incineration takes heat from zero-wasters

People in the Lower Mainland are now recycling 52 per cent of their waste, and by 2015, the goal is to increase that number to 70 per cent, according to the Metro Vancouver Waste Management Committee. But long-term plans to reduce, re-use, and recycle don’t come without some trash-talk from Zero Waste Vancouver, a local advocacy group campaigning against the introduction of waste incinerators to the Metro Vancouver region. The incinerators, called waste-to-energy facilities, will find possible homes on the North Shore and in areas north and south of the Fraser River. According to a February 2008 document outlining Metro Vancouver’s strategy for updating its solid waste management plan, the facilities would generate enough electricity for 40,000 to 50,000 homes and reduce trucking long distances to landfills. They would also offset the waste shipped out to a Cache Creek landfill in interior B.C., which is expected to reach capacity in two years.

But Zero Waste Vancouver coordinator Helen Spiegelman is concerned that the public doesn’t know what’s really at stake in introducing incineration facilities to the area. “We are going to make sure that voters in the upcoming civic elections know what’s at stake here, both the public costs and the long-term impacts on the environment,” she wrote in a press release.

Zero Waste Vancouver organized a public meeting two weeks ago to launch its anti-incineration campaign, where Paul Connett was a guest speaker. Connett is the executive director of the American Environmental Health Studies Project and a retired chemistry professor at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York.

“Vancouver was making considerable strides in getting industry to take some responsibility here,” says Connett from his home in upstate New York. “You were a model for [green] development. Now you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot. ” Connett has been fighting incinerator implementation for over 20 years. “What the incinerator industry has been able to do was try to persuade people that the only two options are either you burn it, or you bury it,” he says. “We have to persuade people that there is a third way: recycling and compost.”

Connett suggests that Metro Vancouver work at implementing zero-waste initiatives that open up more jobs instead of implementing the waste-to-energy facilities. “Once the public finds out what is planned here, they’re going to create merry hell,” says Connett. “The politicians are going to be wishing they had never entertained this for more than a few seconds.”

Waste management committee member and NPA mayoral candidate Peter Ladner supports Zero Waste Vancouver’s vocal stance on the waste-to-energy controversy. “I think it’s terrific that we’re getting a public debate going because we definitely need that,” he says.

While Ladner recognizes that waste-to-energy downsides include high building and maintenance costs, he also says protesting the concept of incineration is too simple an approach to a complicated situation. “To just say ‘We don’t want anything burning in our neighbourhood’ is way to simplistic,” he says.

Ongoing coverage of the waste-to-energy debate is available on the member-generated Zero Waste Vancouver website, Blog.ZeroWasteVancouver.org.