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Are we all ready to enter the brave new world of intensive garbage sorting? I’m not so sure I am

April 16th, 2013 · 39 Comments

Every time my niece comes over for a family dinner, she watches in some disbelief as I scrape food scraps into a bucket, peel the labels off tin cans and drop the component parts into the paper recycling bag and the tin/glass/plastics box respectively, and generally act like I’m at a sorting centre.

She thinks I’m a terminal hippie but, of course, I’m just a lapsed Catholic Canadian who can be guilted into some pretty amazing behaviours by someone in authority just telling me the world will be a better place if I do X or Y. In spite of my efforts, I still feel like an environmental failure, especially when I am confronted with the rows of waste containers at super-progressive places (the folk festival, Langara College) and I can’t for the life of me figure what to put in which container. I’ve spent some hours of my life peering through the plastic trying to figure out if I can put the fork made of corn particles and the recycled-cardboard container in the same trash bag.

And now, I and all of you, gentle readers, are about to be tested further as Vancouver, at last, bringing up the rear of the pack, starts rolling out the food-scraps recycling program starting May 1. Over 10 weeks, all neighbourhoods will be inducted into The Plan, which will mean we get our food scraps and yard waste picked up every week, but the other bin with supposedly only the plastics and unsalvageable-in-any-way stuff will only get picked up every two weeks.

My story on this was here with the basic details. What it doesn’t describe is the anguish that is about to amp up in every household as one person, the environmental invigilator of the domicile, harangues the others about banana peels or mouldy cream cheese or ham bones that are chucked by persons lower down on the social-conscience ladder into the regular garbage. It has already started: “If you keep doing that, we’ll run out of room.” “If you don’t learn to put things in the right place, we’re going to have food stuff stinking up the back yard for two weeks.” Etc etc etboringcetera.

Still traumatized, by the way, that there appears to be no place that is the right place to put cat poo-poo, which our two cats produce at amazing volumes.

Other than all that, yay, recycling. Here I come. Yeah.

(Globe story pasted below, as always)

The big garbage revolution will hit Vancouver on May 1, as the city switches to picking up food scraps once a week but regular garbage only once every two weeks.

It’s part of a push to recycle all organics in Metro Vancouver by 2015, a move that is supposed to result in 70 per cent of the region’s garbage being recycled. Vancouver is the last major municipality to put a new system in place.

“We expect it’s going to be a bit of a mindset shift,” deputy city manager Sadhu Johnston said Thursday, as he and Mayor Gregor Robertson showed off the small green plastic food-scrap buckets, labels and instruction booklets that Vancouver’s 90,000 households will receive shortly to alert residents to the new plan.

It will be more than a mindset shift. It will also mean a shift in dollars, facilities and feeder businesses as residents and the city handle 21,000 more tonnes of organic waste a year that will go into green bins and composting facilities, instead of regular garbage and landfills – nearly double what it collected last year.

The city will be spending $5.4-million for a new food-scrap facility at its current transfer station in south Vancouver in order to handle the additional organic material. That new facility will hold organic material until it can be transferred to Harvest Power in Richmond, one of the regional operations for processing food scraps into compost.

The building cost will be paid for through an additional tax of $16 this year and $30 next year.

The new facility will be just a couple of blocks away from hundreds of new condos under construction at Cambie and Marine. But Mr. Johnston said the city is expecting bidders for the new facility to come up with odour-control systems that will ensure Vancouver doesn’t end up with the kinds of complaints about smells that have plagued Harvest Power. Metro Vancouver identified more than 100 odour complaints from residents near Harvest Power as of last fall.

Besides the cost and the holding facility, residents will also be dealing with the particular challenges that come with loading all organics into one bin. Mr. Johnson said there shouldn’t be any problems, since no one is creating more garbage – it’s just the same waste sorted into different bins.

But a new Vancouver company that has sprung up to handle the messes that food-scrap bins produce says that’s not quite true.

“It’s basically concentrating all the food waste in one area and no bags are permitted in the green-waste bin. Elsewhere, paper soaks up some of the organics, but here that doesn’t happen. And when people get maggots, they run screaming,” said Colin Bell. He started VIP Bin Cleaning Vancouver last year, a company he describes as an inevitable part of the “weird and wonderful green economy.”

Mr. Bell’s company provides a washing and disinfecting service on a weekly or monthly basis. He said he’s serving about 200 homes in the Lower Mainland so far, along with a contract with the City of Surrey to clean out returned bins and other contracts with various hotels to clean their food-scrap bins.

Metro Vancouver is banning all food scraps from the landfill as of 2015, which means businesses will have to figure out a system by then, as will cities for their multi-family housing.

Figuring out how to separate and collect food scraps from apartments is sure to be more challenging because of the difficulty residents will have in storing containers of rotting food scraps in small units or large buildings with no systems in place. Mr. Johnston said the city is still working on a plan for that part of food-scraps recycling.

The regional district estimates 200,000 tonnes of organic material can be diverted from landfill each year once the ban is in place.

 

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Voony

    I am not:

    The system is far too complicate in Vancouver,

    After several try, where I see all my garbage not picked up because I happen to put a wrong plastic can in the plastic recycling container. I have to say stop to this ludicrous process. All the thing go in the single general purpose bin.
    That is much simpler…and take less room in the kitchen.

    I watch in disbelief the ballet of truck, passing in my back lane: 20 feet wide, but the truck collect only one side at a time and one bin type at a time, so it passes 6 trucks (or rather 6 time the same truck) in the alley on normal collection day…they don’t forget to emit lot of diesel fume…and obviously that make the garbage collection utterly expensive.

    It is all absolutely ridiculous

    In Toronto, the system is much simpler, wet garbage vs dry garbage. Wet garbage (typically food scrap, but also cat poo, and baby diapers) go in one bin, and can be wrapped in plastic bag…all other in another bin.

    wet garbage is processed in anaerobic plant…where the plastic can be sorted out…that is so much more convenient, and probably more environmentally sensitive that to have citizen wash their bin with copious amount of water and detergent.

  • F.H.Leghorn

    @Frances:”there appears to be no place that is the right place to put cat poo-poo”. Well, there is a provincial election campaign underway. One side or the other could put it to good use, I have no doubt.

  • David W.

    There is a compost bin at work that accepts a variety of materials including used napkins and the like. It seems strange for CoV not to allow the same things.

    We use a natural wheat litter and flush our cat’s business down the toilet like we do our own. Wheat is more expensive than litter made with newspaper, wood chips or clay, but it’s safe for the plumbing and biodegrades better than the rest. You do have to be careful to break up the chunks before flushing or you’ll end up with wet feet.

    Voony has a point about 3 different trucks each traversing the lane twice, but my six year old has figured out what bin things go in so it can’t be that complicated.

  • jenables

    I have heard nothing but amazing things about Toronto’s recycling. we have so far to go.. I love in an apartment so i will assume that this doesn’t apply to me, like the compost. if we wanted to keep things out of the landfill we would make an everything (as in lightbulbs, clamshells, batteries, cans, plastic packaging and containers) bin (you could probably contract binners to sort it!) and actually provide container recycling to businesses, with the cost of doing business in Vancouver what it is that would be fair. I can’t help but think the organic waste helps to break down the other garbage though. also, does anyone know what happens to the containers? what does Vancouver they do with them?

  • jenables

    hahaha..I live and love in an apartment.

  • Glissando Remmy

    Thought of The Night

    “Bullshit… only in Vision Vancouver’s symbolic way. Shyster-ism.”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqyVmwcuvqQ

    BTW, just the other day I witnessed, a City Recycling truck, with one driver, stopping every 10 m or so on the same block, one side only, to… throw the contains of blue/ grey/ yellow containers … all while the engine was spewing exhaust at its idling best.
    Nuff said.

    We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.

  • Sean Nelson

    We only put out the garbage about once every six to eight weeks anyway, so this isn’t a big deal for us. We recycle and compost almost everything except meat scraps, so it takes that long for the two of us to fill up the garbage bag. Meat scraps go into the freezer until we’re ready to put out the garbage, so they’ll just go into a different bin now…

  • waltyss

    Well, we were discussing cat turds and true to form, the NPA troll appears and offers us his droppings.
    Recently, George Affleck, the NPA councillor (the other one never speaks so we don’t know if she is around) was on Bill Good to complain about this new system. Or to sort of complain because while he was complaining, he was saying how much in favour of it he was.
    All the callers however were from the other lower Mainland municipalities and talked about how well the system worked and how little problem it actually was. Suddenly Affleck turned to talking about how well, they wouldn’t let him see the budget or something.
    We will adjust and it will be a non issue. The troll will even figure out which bin to put the hash ash into. But let me help: Glissy, it’s the same one you put your other bullshit into.

  • Agustin

    I think I remember reading (on this blog?) that the head of waste management wanted to move to a single recycling bin but that it would take some time and money to implement.

    Anyway, bring on the food scrap program!

  • Michael Kluckner

    The Australian town we lived in from 2006-9 switched from blue box to single bin recycling while we were there. The council claimed it was a cost-saver, so we got a yellow-topped wheelybin for recyclables and a red-topped one for garbage. No worries. (Very few back lanes there, either, so it’s all pushed out onto the street.)

    On my East Van lane, I would bet that about 8 of the two dozen houses will take to the new sort-a-thon immediately. They (we) are already composters of yard stuff, so it’s no real challenge. But the others, such as the ones with the totally paved back yards and just a garbage bin, are going to find it a struggle. Either they will have to start freezing their food scraps or it’s going to be a long, smelly summer with just a bi-weekly pickup.

  • boohoo

    ‘Intensive garbage sorting’?

    Seems pretty basic to me. An easy option is of course to just produce less garbage.

    As for the recycling truck ‘spewing exhaust’…is that what you’ve been reduced to? Sad little anecdotal tales where you weirdly, desperately try to slag vision?

    Is the system perfect? No. Does that mean we should belittle and do nothing? No. That kind of bottom of the barrel scraping attitude is pathetic.

  • Terry M

    Walrus,
    Have I read before that you are auditioning to take over from Conan o’Brian Timothy… the Insult Dog?
    Please RSVP ASAP . I don’t want to miss it!!

  • Kenji

    Recycling is like any life change such as going to the gym – merely force yourself to do it six times, and by then you will find it difficult to stop doing it.

    But it is much easier with large dedicated containers set up in a corner, into which the cardboard, papers, and tins can be flung.

    Generally, our garbage can has been less than a third full every week. However, it tends to get filled up with the excess from our neighbours – it will be some time before everyone gets the hang of this system.

  • boohoo

    @13

    No doubt, I’m on a corner lot and my garbage is half full of other people’s crap every week.

  • waltyss

    Terry M, I save my talent for keeping the troll in check and Mme. Bula.

  • Chris Keam

    Re: cat feces, couldn’t one tip them from the litter box into the toilet?

  • Glissando Remmy

    Thought Of The Day

    “Some people are playing chess against themselves… and still lose.”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m7dcbIKvlw

    Awww.
    Waltyss, why are you doing this to yourself?

    We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.

  • Voony

    Thanks for the trick and solution regarding the feces which goes along this line:

    “For the baby diapers, flush it in the toilet, but don’t forget to chop it in your food processor before, to avoid to clog your drain”

    Thought well intentioned the tricks and solutions suggested here are simply bad idea, because not sustainable…

    They are economically unsustainable:
    They involve to oversize our sewage network (and per way of consequence, our drinkable water network), our freezer, our electricity network,…

    They are also environmentally unsustainable
    and defeating the original goal: environment preservation.

    The right way, is in fact the reverse: one should have dry toilet at home, and compost his own feces as long as its pet and baby ones (don’t use it for your vegetable garden, but perfectly fine for your flower bed).

    Yeah because, in my world, ofeces are organic matter…and should go in the organic bin (like they do in Toronto).

    To be sure, I compost my food scrap (not my feces thought), but the City fo vancouver is punsihing me to do that: first I had to bought a composter, but now, I learn I will have to pay for the big new composter which I don’t need: why I should compost, if I am punished for that?

  • Voony

    The other day, I was trying to return an empty bottle of wine, but the zealous liquor employee has noticed that the bottle was bought in France, not in BC. a sufficient ground to refuse my glass.

    So I have try to figure out where glass bottle should go, and I have discover with great astonishment it should go in the blue bin with plastic (?).

    Well, a normal collection truck gonna compact it, (plastic is too light to not be compacted), so the bottle gonna break ( I am not sure the Vancouver garbage truck are compacting the garbage, what could be another source of deep inefficiency of garbage collection here), and it is well known that broken glass is some of the most abrasive material you can find around…

    the only effect to put glass into your bin, whatever color it is, is to damage the garbage processing material, and eventually hurt the worker handling/sorting out your garbage.

    When broken in too small piece, it is basically not possible to sort out glass of other material so your glass is virtually not recyclable.

    That is the main reason, in Europe, at least in the country I come from, but I have noticed that in many other countries, glass is collected in separate and specific container. Basically every lost village of France has a least one of them. The tourist could not be familiar with it because the container are mainly underground: http://voony.wordpress.com/tag/underground-container/

    So, what is the reason, here we don’t separate glass and put it with other recyclable material, when it is totally inefficient?
    One told me it was just a political expedient: glass is heavy, so it helps to achieve recycling target set by the political agenda of the day…

    The quality and efficiency of the recycling here doesn’t matter at all, it is all just theater to make us feel good…

  • gman

    I for one do not want to live in a world where I cant park my car in font of my house because there are too many bins.And for the people that think recycling is going to somehow save the planet I suggest you actually watch the link Glissy posted instead of yapping off about the end of the world.It is what it is, no matter how scary you try to make it sound.Simple logic always wins.

  • waltyss

    Ah Glissy, he’s too avuncular to be you and much much too old to be me. Perhaps, it’s your alter ego, g(oomba)man.
    Anyway, the flatearthers are out in force. Time to go to bed.

  • gman

    Poor poor Witless,does your tiny penis make you lash out or is it your total lack of reality ,no matter, you are a fluffer and are known as such, so if you have no intelligent contribution why not STFU

  • boohoo

    Can you two just go back to the cave and leave this blog? I mean, penis jokes? Come on…

  • Bill

    How many residences don’t have a garbarator? Most of the food scraps go down the drain and what is left (a few bones – even less if you’re vegan) will easily fit in the regular garbage.

  • Chris Porter

    Here’s a relevant article in the Torontoist talking about the tradeoffs of separated waste streams and a system being developed in Houston that hopes to use advanced technology (from the mining industry) to separate waste from a single bin.

    http://torontoist.com/2013/03/public-works-one-bin-for-all/

  • Mark

    Apparently garburators are not as good an environmental options as composting, and put undue stress on the city sewage system to boot, which likely results in its own economic cost:

    http://metronews.ca/news/194715/garburate-waste-no-more-and-understanding-organic-labels/

    On a side note, Frances (if you see this), is there anything that can be done on the website side of things to block commentators who offer nothing but partisan/personal sniping? There are are often interesting discussions and information to be found in the comments, but you need to wade through a sea of juvenile anonymous personal attacks to find any of it.

    I’m sure you have better things to do than play moderator, but the boring flame war stuff threatens to drown out any valuable discussion here…

  • Ned

    Aaaah,
    Great wit in here.
    Nothing like one, two dozes of Waltyss humor per day.
    Just what the doctor recommended.
    gee…

  • teririch

    The restaurant next to the building I live in has been doing food scrapping pretty much since they opened.

    Last year a really, really bad infestation of maggots happened. I don’t know how or why.

    The little buggers left the scrap bin, travelling over to our back entrance way and got in between where the door meets the pavement.

    The one morning I came down to head out and was just gob-smacked when I hit the landing to get to the back entrance way. There were thousands of them. One of the strata council members was entering the back way as I was heading out – we were both just standing there watching the floor and walls crawl.

    Needless to say, 8 spraying sessions later over two weeks (they also got intot he laundry and electrical rooms) and changing of the rug in that area cleared finally them.

    And yes, the restaurant did have to re-imburse our strata.

  • teririch

    I actually find it kind of amusing – composting has been around for decades if not longer.

    When I was a kid growing up – we had a wood box built off to one corner of the yard and that is where food scaps, leaves, lawn cuttings etc. went.

    In-turn that material was used in the garden.

    It was jsut what people did.

    Now there is a ‘process’ and government and businesses involved.

    That I just don’t get.

  • Terry M

    Teririch @28
    “I actually find it kind of amusing – composting has been around for decades if not longer.”
    ABSOLUTELY!

    “When I was a kid growing up – we had a wood box built off to one corner of the yard and that is where food scaps, leaves, lawn cuttings etc. went.
    In-turn that material was used in the garden.
    It was jsut what people did.”
    EXACTLY!

    “Now there is a ‘process’ and government and businesses involved.”
    IT’S LOTS AND LOTS OF “GREEN” MONEY INVOLVED, PHOTO OPS, ETC,ETC…

    “That I just don’t get.”
    NOW YOU DO!

    (By the way… I used capital letters to better differentiate my words from yours) 🙂

  • teririch

    @Terry M. #29

    Some things have become much more complicated than they should or need to be. But like you said ‘green dollars’ and those ‘green jobs’ the poli’s are touting for votes. Sadly too many have jumped on the green bandwagon.

    If someone really wanted to make an impact on recylcing, they would figure our how to recycle your Timmy’s or Starbucks or whatever coffee cups and the hard plastic packaging that some many items are bound in at time of purchase.
    You know the ones that need the jaws of life to pry them free….:)

    On another note; I see we the city is moving to bi-weekly versus weekly in an effort to reduce ….garbage?

    Methinks the same amount of garbage will still be generated, people will just have to have it sit around longer. Me also thinks this is a cost cutting measue of sorts…. People will continue to recycle what they can, regardless of weekly, bi-weekly or monthly garbage collection.

    This seems more about money and finance.

    Trivia time: Did you know that in the production of the average car, 55 lbs of copper is used.

    This number doubles or triples with the production of ‘Electric Vehicles’. (Wiring etc)

    China is investing billions into producing Electric Vehicles which is part in parcel why they are busily buying up …..copper/mines.

  • teririch

    Fixing an error in my #30 post…

    On another note; I see we the city is moving to bi-weekly garbage collection versus weekly in an effort to reduce ….garbage?

    (Apologies, some days my multi-tasking skills need work…)

  • Glissando Remmy

    Thought of The Day

    “Times will come when people will be punished for simply… not getting the right quota of paper recycling. “The powers that be” will even invent a Ministry to deal with these villains.”

    Warning. The following is not a joke.
    A Ministry dealing with Recycling enforcement is already in action in this… country. Failed miserably in others in the past though.

    ATTENTION
    The following is a message only for the fellowship currently doing tricks inside City Hall:

    “The best and the only way, to deal successfully with any category of recyclable materials, is to reduce the packaging… at the source.” –
    Glissando Remmy, from “Waltyss, Juice Man and the Tin Can” 2008, Knopf & Pff

    Ok, Einsteins?

    We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy.

  • waltyss

    Into the ozone layer a bit earlier than normal, I see, my dear trollish friend.
    Endless watching of YouTube can get stressful, I guess.
    Who knew that working on filling up landfills more slowly would be so controversial. But with the flatearthers, if it is suggested by VV, even if a direct copy of something working well elsewhere, it must be wrong. That is, like CC and Councillor the Insurance Duck, they are busy stealing it.
    One does need a sense of humour to read this blog.

  • teririch

    Sigh…waiting for the day to come where waltyss can post a comment without the need to insult someone.

    Well, Christmas is coming and some say to, the second coming of Christ. ….

  • waltyss

    teririch: I make all sorts of posts without insulting anyone, sometimes agreeing, often disagreeing. I also believe you can disagree without being disagreeable.
    However, that said, the troll and his camp followers do bug me because they are always negative, always insulting and usually being scatological or entranced with their peepees. If you want to say where, well, just about any troll post will do. Given their general tenor, they are fair game.
    Yet, somehow the troll doesn’t bother you. To your eyes, he’s not insulting.
    As they say, that’s rich.
    Anyway, you want to have a reasonable discussion/debate; let’s do it. Want to hurl insults, I’m game but you start it.
    Bottom line

  • Terry M

    Waltyss,
    You my dear, start all the fights on all the posts you’re on. You must be either blind or really… late!

  • KSK

    I’m with Mark (#26) re: having to wade through the off-topic comments. A simple way to do this would be to provide a thumbs-up or thumbs-down option beside each comment. No mederation by Frances required. That way we can easily skip over the deprecated comments…

  • Norman

    Bring on the garbage police.