The city has had a test going since last September with 2,000 houses to see how residents respond to having their regular garbage reduced to once every two weeks and being encouraged to recycle all their food scraps into their yard trimmings bin.
I’ve been wondering how it’s going and yesterday, I got a chance to get some answers, which ran along the lines of: Pretty darn good.
But I also got a better understanding of why it takes so long to roll out recycling. I’ve been waiting for food-scraps recycling forever, it seems like, and couldn’t understand the city’s go-slow approach.
But, as head engineer Peter Judd said in my story and here, recycling programs don’t inspire an instant embrace from everyone. I hadn’t really clued into that, being a dutiful recycler (daughter of Prairie farmers who just couldn’t bear to throw anything in the garbage) who actually feels pain at seeing a tin can thrown into the regular trash can.
However, it takes a lot of people a lot of prompting to get with the program. And food-scraps-recycling is difficult, remembering what can and can’t go in. When I went down to the 311 centre a couple of months ago, the director there told me that the pilot produced a spike of calls and he expected even more if/when it was introduced city-wide.
Judd also said they’re expecting a lot of people will order larger regular-trash carts to cope with having to hold that garbage for two weeks between pick-ups (though the pilot showed there wasn’t as much cart expansion as had been expected). That will cost millions of dollars if a lot of the 100,000 households in the city decided to move up a cart size.
Once this goes through (and it’s also happening in Surrey and the three North Shore municipalities), it’s expected to produce the biggest jump in recycling since blue boxes went in and transform the region’s garbage diversion from 55 per cent to 80 per cent.
I’m hanging on to my chicken carcass here, just waiting.
60 responses so far ↓
1 Vickie // Apr 5, 2012 at 10:14 pm
We’ve had kitchen scrap recycling at our 11-unit coop since the beginning of the program. It seems we have embraced it despite half of our residents being 70+. I have noticed the occassional “contaminant” in the bin but I am pretty sure it’s someone walking up our lane dumping a bottle or can in becaue they just haven’t bothereed to look at which bin they are using, or possibly can’t read the English label. I do wish the bins were easier to distinguish at night or in low light. I typically take garbage/recyclables out on my early morning dog walk and the bins aren’t reliably in the same spot from day to day. It can be really hard to tell the dark green lid from the black lid in our dimly lit lane at 5:30 AM.
2 voony // Apr 5, 2012 at 10:26 pm
The chicken is part of the solution not of the problem:
Belgium offers chickens to waste-cutting households a… nd some French municipalities too.
3 Frances Bula // Apr 5, 2012 at 11:28 pm
@voony. You’re really just asking for a flame war, aren’t you?
4 Sean Nelson // Apr 6, 2012 at 8:30 am
We’ve been composting almost all of our waste (compost bins are amazing – you just keep throwing stuff into them and they swallow it all up like a bottomless pit). The only kitchen scraps that go into our garbage bin are bones – but it’s a pretty low volume. We only put garbage out about once every 4-6 weeks, so we throw the bones into the freezer until we’re ready to put out a load – it usually only amounts to a small baggie’s worth. So for us at least this isn’t going to make any significant difference to our garbage volume.
When the garbage bins were deployed we took the default sized container, which is larger than we usually need – but I like having the extra capacity for the odd occasion where I have something extra to dispose of. I suspect a lot of folks will make the same choice, even though it means a modest extra charge on the property tax bill.
5 gmgw // Apr 6, 2012 at 10:25 am
This is the most exciting news story I’ve read since the firemen got that cat out of the tree.
gmgw
6 Sean Bickerton // Apr 6, 2012 at 2:42 pm
I think Voony might be onto something …
7 Bill Lee // Apr 6, 2012 at 4:36 pm
Chicken bones!! I thought you would regale us with your 35 lb Chistmas Turkey recipe.
Give valuable composting material to the city! Never. [Besides the inevitable contaminents: batteries, metals, plastics, rat poisons, etc. will ruin the reputation of Vancouver Brand compost)
I’d like to see clear bins so the garbage pickers can pre-screen it.
Get a bigger can. The large 180 litre will take a city councillor body. I checked.
Hmm. I can’t wait until people find out what summer compost waiting 2 weeks, or 4 if they miss the pickup with the revolving days, will smell like.
And will people in the suburbs be stealing city compostables for resale in the Fraser Valley when the Agricultural Quotas end under the Harper negotiated Trans-Pacific-Partnership?
8 brilliant // Apr 6, 2012 at 4:40 pm
@gmgw 5-table scraps and gourmet hot dog carts, such are the bold initiatives from Vision Vancouver.
9 Terry M // Apr 6, 2012 at 5:26 pm
Chicken bones? LOL What are you trying todo? Increase the coyote population? Agree with brilliant at 8… ,Vision Vancouver … This all they are capable of doing! FWIW At my place we did our composting and recycling until our side road bin started to accumulate little bags of dog shit to the point thatwe had to throw the composted altogether. Thank you neighbors of Mayor Robertson, two blocks away, Thank you Vision for your idiotic initiatives. Or maybe this is the wrong city of experimentation…
10 Chris B // Apr 6, 2012 at 5:51 pm
If even Ottawa can do it (entering year 2 of the green bins here), I have no doubt that Vancouverites can grasp the difficult concept of food waste into one bin, all else into the other.
11 gman // Apr 6, 2012 at 6:21 pm
Penn & Teller have something to say about recycling. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzLebC0mjCQ&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL04C18A317C16401B
12 Glissando Remmy // Apr 6, 2012 at 9:56 pm
Thought of The Evening
“It cost more to recycle a plastic bottle than to make one from scratch… but it makes you feel good.
”
gman #11
Man, oh , man, I could kiss your forehead
Thank you for the most entertaining half an hour this Friday evening. I think BS’s Penn & Teller summed it up for me, not that if it was necessary, but it was comical to see all these Green jokers, who in fact are, making jobs and a good income for themselves while in the process of telling the rest of us how to live our lives… according to their “needs”. Kinda’ like what Vision Vancouver is preaching around the water cooler in this city.
No wonder that “heavy environmentalists” like Robertson, Reimer, Meggs, LOL, selected each other to be joined at the hip in their quest for better control of the lives of the unsuspecting Vancouver Shmuck. And keep in mind that, when behind all this there is real money, not from recycling, but from”donating” from the likes of Solomon and “dirty & polluting rubber industrialists” like Newell, there is nothing but Church Of Scientology from here. and Kumbaya My Love … the Japanese are doing it, you know…
So remember everyone:
- Colored eggshells in the Yellow recycling bin
- Slightly used toilet paper in the Brown Bin
- All the Memos, notes, jokes and sketches gathered during the public hearing re. The Rize in the White Trash Paper Bin
…
We live in Vancouver and this keeps us busy
13 Chris B // Apr 7, 2012 at 4:22 am
Well, if a Las Vegas comedy magic duo are against recycling, I am all turned around on the subject. Still, I think we should wait and get Siegfried and Roy’s take as well.
14 Peter Ladner // Apr 7, 2012 at 9:24 am
I don’t get the snickering. The era of “waste” is over. The era of landfills is over. They’re virtually banned in Europe. Organic “waste” makes up 40% of the current landfill volume and has been banned from going there after 2015. It makes total sense to deal with food scraps differently from throwing them in with other garbage.
For those not lucky enough to be able to compost at home, mixing food waste with garden clippings already being picked up is a good option. Even better is to compost it separately and make fantastic soil (Pemberton is just setting up to do this, using lots of Whistler restaurant leftovers, growing soil for Pemberton’s organic farms.)
The real challenge in Metro Van is figuring out a way to have decentralized food scrap composting that makes soil available nearby for urban gardens, rather than sending scores of trucks out to one site in south Richmond.
15 gman // Apr 7, 2012 at 11:15 am
GR #12 Here is another story on green gone wild. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7187937/Barber-banned-from-composting-hair-clippings.html Where will it end ?
16 peterg // Apr 7, 2012 at 11:47 am
Judd needs to get his hapless department to figure out how to get rid of the dumpsters. We still have these smelly eyesores right out in front of our “world class” restaurants. The city may employ some highly qualified engineers. I just wish they would hire on an amateur with a little imagination.
17 Bill McCreery // Apr 7, 2012 at 3:04 pm
Richmond has had an organic waste recycling programme for the past two years for single family, phase 1, and for the past year town house complexes. They’ve not started the apartment buildings yet. Vancouver is evaluating it’s study.
Improving recycling is a priority for the entire region. I did some work the GVRD, the proud owners of the historic Ashcroft Ranch, which they bought to use part of it as Vancouver’s next dump, but can’t use due to the opposition of the Ashcroft band. I designed new housing for the ranch hands, and in doing so became somewhat familiar with the current processing of Metro’s garbage. It’s an amazingly elaborate, multi-staged process that ends with sending tens or hundreds of trucks a day to the soon to be filled Cache Creek Landfill. It’s not smart to be trucking our garbage hundreds of kilometres every day of the week to someone else’s back yard on the congested Trans Canada Highway.
It’s logical to find ways to reduce this, in fact, proportionately increasing volume.
Experience has shown me that it’s easier to recycle the organics than the plastics, metals, paper and cardboards. I can’t remember the long list of what goes in which bag or box for the rest of it. Every 2 weeks makes sense for normal pickup but a larger container or 2 are a definite must. The organics bin is so large that the composting process would be largely completed by the time it was finished, especially in hot summer weather, so it only goes out about every 3 weeks less than half full. It’s smell in summer is problematic as the bin is not tightly sealed.
Another problem longer term is that the process is time consuming and requires focus and commitment. Will that last? It would help to know what actually happens to our tin cans and chicken bones. How successful is all this effort? What are the costs? The savings? What kind off revenue is created from the recycled materials? Are we really making a difference? Some transparency in the form of regularly updated status reports might be helpful.
18 Bill McCreery // Apr 7, 2012 at 3:14 pm
Left this question out. Why can’t we figure out ways to buy things in packaging that costs more than the item we’re buying? The sheer volume of packaging of consumer products is idiotic. Next will be cars delivered to your door in a giant styrofoam filled cardboard crate. Banning plastic Safeway bags is a timid step in the right direction but if Vancouver has bike lanes, like them or not, where’s the courage from Council on packaging?
19 Terry m // Apr 7, 2012 at 3:53 pm
Or we could wait for the Joker Duo a local comedic act of Chris B and Peter Ladner
I’ve seen your routine gentlemen and it’s not funny. Now that you’re in the boat, you feel like you would like some cake for yourselves and a cleaner personal space for you to do yor backyard gardening… How romantic
20 Joe Just Joe // Apr 7, 2012 at 5:05 pm
Seems like we are going about things the wrong way. With over 50% of people now living in multi-family dwellings it would be easier to target them first instead of sfhs. They also use private haulers so the city could sit back and let them sort of the teething pains then jump onboard a year or so later. The sfhs that want to compost now can still do so w/o the city, it’s a bit harder living in a condo.
21 brilliant // Apr 7, 2012 at 7:06 pm
@Peter Ladner 13-If its organic waste what’s the big deal about putting it in a landfill? It will just naturally decompose. Seems to me the inorganic waste would be a bigger problem.
22 Bill McCreery // Apr 7, 2012 at 11:55 pm
brilliant, the “big deal” about putting organic waste in a landfill is that it emits methane gas that the science says is not good for our earths atmosphere and therefore not good for us. No doubt there are other opinions on this subject.
In any case the Metro engineers had designed a very elaborate methane capturing system of piping for their new landfill wherever it might eventually be. It also had a supposedly impervious membrane that will not allow decomposing contaminants to leach into the soils and there to the waterways. From experience I am very leery of those who say they can solve problems such as these with technical solutions. They are never foolproof and they don’t last forever.
23 F.H.Leghorn // Apr 8, 2012 at 11:26 am
@Bill 22: Those would be the same (or similar) engineers who designed industrial processes that dump their waste products out the chimney into the air or down the drain into the nearest body of water. Or the designers of packaging that becomes trash as soon as you unwrap the product which, as often as not, is also “disposable”.
Everything in the biosphere dies eventually and decomposes (producing methane) to become soil. Everything above sea level is then eroded and flushed into the oceans. That includes us and our cities and roads and everything else.
Apparently politicians are no more capable than the rest of us of thinking long-term. For them it’s the election cycle and for us it’s our brief lifetimes.
24 Andrew Browne // Apr 8, 2012 at 2:38 pm
1. Port Coquitlam has had their residents mixing kitchen organic waste into their green waste bin for years now. It’s easy and is not a big deal.
2. Why recycle green waste? I’ll tell you why.
It takes up way too much space in costly landfills, and doesn’t settle predictably (like inorganic waste). Therefore it helps to fill up very expensive landfills far too quickly, and once full, becomes a management and custodial nightmare for ongoing monitoring. Plus, it doesn’t need to be there, unlike some other wastes which cannot be recycled or otherwise used.
That about sums it up; I may have neglected to mention other benefits.
25 Bill Lee // Apr 8, 2012 at 4:42 pm
The ‘Soviet of Burnaby’ page
burnaby.ca/City-Services/Garbage—Recycling/Food-Scraps-Recycling-Program/Single-Family-Food-Scraps-Recycling.html
and one of the best set of pages in English on the science of composting
http://compost.css.cornell.edu/science.html
and even more
cwmi.css.cornell.edu/resources.htm
especially “Mortality composting”
cwmi.css.cornell.edu/mortality.htm
26 JenStDen // Apr 8, 2012 at 9:08 pm
Great story Frances… A+!
To me, it’s kind of a bid deal that there are no immediate plans to include apartments and condos. Not only have Port Coquitlam and New Westminster had food scraps pick-up for years, they both now include multi-family buildings in the program. What’s stopping us?
27 Glissando Remmy // Apr 8, 2012 at 9:34 pm
Chris B #13 says:
“Well, if a Las Vegas comedy magic duo are against recycling, I am all turned around on the subject. Still, I think we should wait and get Siegfried and Roy’s take as well.”
You have to admit, the entertainment value is priceless. The other guys,, the ‘scientists’ though, are skimming you cold.
Behind that duo (P & T) goes as much research as it goes behind Al Gore and David Suzuki’s global warming research. Gee, I don’t know who to trust first either, the entertainer, the politician or the fruit fly biologist…
Perhaps Peter Ladner could write a book on the subject of credible sources, new man’s recycling values and other green misdemeanors …
28 Tessa // Apr 9, 2012 at 4:54 am
Comment threads such as this are rather pathetic. I have a nagging suspicion that people are against composting simply because Vision is bringing it in. It’s reactionary and it’s sad.
Composting will save money. It means landfills last longer, it means we don’t have to truck nearly as much waste hundreds of kilometres on winding roads to stink up someone else’s town. Ever lived next to a landfill? It sucks.
City compost pickup is easy. It’s done virtually everywhere in Europe. Just have a separate bin next to your garbage and when it’s full take it out to the bin outside, and watch it get whisked away every garbage day. Done.
It’s good for the environment. It produces highly fertile soil to help our area farms, it reduces methane from landfills, it reduces those truck emissions going to the landfill. It’s part of a Metro Vancouver goal that every municipality has to work towards, so it’s not even a Vision Vancouver initiative really.
For those of you who believe Vegas comedians are better sources for scientific data on recycling than scientists, you are insane. For those of you who think this is all Vision has done in the last four years (Brilliant?), you seem to be forgetful. Whatever it is, it’s childish. This should be one of those things where we can ignore partisan differences and actually focus on solutions to problems. This is science, not politics. Get over it.
29 brilliant // Apr 9, 2012 at 9:26 am
@Tessa 27-Remember the UK, that jolly old kingdom with about 1/4 of BC’s landmass?
Only 1 of their 14 local authorities bothers to recycle domestic food waste. The rest is incinerated. So yes, this is just another greenwashing ploy. Like watering restrictions in one of North America’s consistently wettest cities. No wonder a recent study showed youth tuning out the Cassandra-like environmentalists.
30 Rico // Apr 9, 2012 at 10:24 am
@ Brilliant,
We have lots of water in Vancouver, what we don’t have is lots of treated potable water. That costs lots and lots of money. If you want to have enough treated potable water (the stuff from your tap) during the dry summers we need another reservoir and all the associated infrastructure. I am sure you would love to add a couple of billion to your tax bill so your lawn can get watered everyday.
News flash unlike the UK we only incinerate a small component of our waste so organic material in the GVRD ends up taking up space in our landfills… After being trucked to Cash Creek….now that is a great use of your tax dollars.
31 JohnA // Apr 9, 2012 at 11:47 am
Well it would be interesting to see some tonnage numbers of how much food is being diverted from the landfill. There was a piece in The Province last month about a pilot project to deconstruct homes instead of tearing them down. The numbers I thought were quite staggering, 800 houses torn down last year at roughly 80 tonnes per home making for 64,000 tonnes going into the landfill. Of course they didn’t mention commercial building demolition (ie: Farmer Building and Power Block) then if you factor in dumped mattresses and couches there is a massive amount of stuff going into the dump. Seems that area need some examination!
32 brilliant // Apr 9, 2012 at 3:46 pm
@JohnA 30-Very true and yet Gregor the Green does nothing to discourage the wholesale destruction of older, modest affordable homes in favour of brand new monster houses. Sheer hypocrisy.
33 gman // Apr 9, 2012 at 5:14 pm
The way I see it is we can carry on dumping it in the landfill and let it break down to about one tenth of its original volume while at the same time it will create methane.We can draw off the methane and burn it to create power then use that power to produce hydrogen to run the trucks and buses on and actually make a difference with real pollution instead of using diesel fuel. Or we can go out and buy a fleet of trucks at about $300,000 a pop and then hire a bunch of well paid well pensioned city employees.Then these new employees can drive out to the site in the morning pick up their new truck and drive into town where an employee will get out of the truck with a stick to chase the vermin away from the can so he can dump the offending waste into the new truck.At the end of the day they will drive back to the site and dump their load on the giant outdoor pile where it will begin to decompose emitting the oh so scary methane directly into the atmosphere.The site will also require several people and pieces of heavy equipment to turn the humungous pile every once in a while.And dont forget the managers…lots and lots of managers who will have to jet set around the world to exotic places to make sure we are doing it right.So what do you think we will do,contain the methane and make a buck or let it escape and spend millions on this hair brained scheme. And if we spend these millions what do we get…….some dirt.
34 Dave 2 // Apr 9, 2012 at 11:43 pm
Really? As a right wing voter and practicing composter residing in the one-party state of Burnaby, I can’t understand the negative posts. Burnaby used to collect yard waste in the clear plastic bags, and converted to bins for yard waste and garbage a year or two ago… Allowing fat, bones, and other waste not suitable for the backyard composter doesn’t cost any more, what’s the problem?
35 Tessa // Apr 10, 2012 at 2:09 am
@gman: After we spend what millions? Diverting waste so it isn’t driven by truck to Cache Creek to fill up expensive landfills saves money. Which math teacher taught you that x-y=2x?
36 Agustin // Apr 10, 2012 at 7:54 am
@ brilliant: You have jumped the shark.
37 Chris Keam // Apr 10, 2012 at 8:21 am
“The way I see it is we can carry on dumping it in the landfill and let it break down to about one tenth of its original volume while at the same time it will create methane.We can draw off the methane and burn it to create power ”
You’d have to put a roof over the entire landfill. Methane doesn’t bubble up in one spot that’s convenient for humans. Pre-supposing the landfill is the right place for food scraps (it’s not) you could conceivably dump all the scraps in one part of the landfill and tap the methane emissions at that point, but then you are right back to having to separate food from other waste.
Sadly, there’s a lot of misinformation and unconsidered opinions polluting this thread. Brilliant’s remarks regarding water conservation are a prime example of someone who has failed to do even the most cursory fact-finding before coming up with a half-baked perspective.
GR’s invocation of entertainers (as usual… what, George Carlin didn’t tackle the topic?
merely points to the fact some would prefer this to be is a political discussion rather than a useful conversation about waste management.
@Bill McCreery:
If you had been elected to Council, how would you have proposed the City of Vancouver reduce or eliminate consumer packaging within the city’s borders? This seems to me to be the kind of global issue for which the current council is always being chastised, as they don’t have the resources to tackle it. Nor would business in the region be thrilled by the idea that they would be competing on a tilted playing field that is likely to impact their bottom line.
38 gman // Apr 10, 2012 at 11:05 am
Chris K,before you beak off about other peoples knowledge you may want to educate yourself on the different methods presently being used.This might help show that its you that is lacking . http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/epd/codes/landfill_gas/pdf/ghg-reducing-guidelines.pdf
39 brilliant // Apr 10, 2012 at 12:14 pm
@Agustin 36-Thank you for your mercifully brief contribution. Your usual verbosity seems to have flown the coop (along with tbe homeless chickens).
40 Bill // Apr 10, 2012 at 3:10 pm
Forget about landfills – the best solution is to incinerate everything where the recycled value is less than the cost of recycling.
41 Bill McCreery // Apr 10, 2012 at 8:51 pm
@ Chris 38.
I believe packaging is a Federal responsibility. However, there are a number of things Council can and should be doing, including:
1) Communicating the costs / benefits / liabilities / effectiveness of our current waste handling system on an annual report basis. Publicly traded companies all have their annual reports (normally a bit longer than Vancouver’s current 6 1/2 page excuse for “open and transparent” civic government). The City should do so on all important expenditures in language, and a format so taxpayers ‘get the picture’ on an annual basis and can also compare from year to year.
2) This(-ese) report(s) can also be used to educate and lobby the 3 senior governments on a persistent and continuing basis.
For instance, if the cost and landfill capacity requirements of continuing as is compared to reducing packaging, pickup, sorting, trucking, recapture, environmental impact, etc. are identified, wouldn’t that be useful information to help in the education process with the public, industry, business and senior governments?
3) Safeway bags, et al are one of perhaps a number of initiatives Council should be being more proactive on. I’d be interested in hearing other suggestions from you, Chris, and others here. Maybe we can put together a little Bula Blog ‘waste not want not’ presentation for Council.
Once again, these types of initiatives need to be not only acted upon effectively, but the ‘annual report’ methodology must be employed at all levels for the reasons mentioned above.
4) How all these save the Planet techy systems need to be in Grade 12 101 terms so we can all understand how to “tap the methane emissions” (my understanding is the Metro Garbage folks have an apparently effective system of doing this that doesn’t require another new Stadium roof).
That”… the current Council is always being chastised, as they don’t have the resources to tackle it” is one of the joys of a majority Council. Not doing enough and criticism goes with that territory. Even other Council’s have been harshly dealt with by informed citizenry and frugal taxpayers. Not having “the resources to tackle it” is another matter. This Council knows better than most that budgeting is all about priorities. They found money for the bike lanes didn’t they. I only wish they were really “open and transparent” both on the what they’re doing side, as well as how much it’s costing and what else is being sacrificed. That alone could keep 3 or 4 opposition Councillors very busy uncovering for the next 2 3/4 years.
42 Chris Keam // Apr 10, 2012 at 8:58 pm
@Gman:
Admittedly I only scanned the 73 page document to which you linked, using ‘methane’ as a search term, but I didn’t see any reference to your proposed solution from post #33 (or variations of same). If you could point out where in the document I can find more information about current examples of harvesting methane from unsorted landfill waste, then I will happily proffer an apology for suggesting your concept appears unworkable.
cheers,
Chris K.
43 Chris Keam // Apr 10, 2012 at 9:33 pm
@Bill
Thanks for your response. If we are talking about priorities it’s important to recognize that the entire U.S. consumes 300,000 tonnes (1 billion bags) of plastic bags a year. In comparison, Metro Vancouver’s total waste generated for 2010 was 3,075,392 tonnes. Of all waste our society is currently generating, I think plastic shopping bag use should be reduced, but it needn’t be a huge priority.
The U.S. shopping bag factoid is from the Clean Air Council. More information on waste management in the region is available in this report: http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/publications/Publications/2010_Solid_Waste_Management_Annual_Summary.pdf
which isn’t quite as comprehensive as Bill McC. is talking about, but still useful for background info.
cheers,
CK
44 MB // Apr 11, 2012 at 9:45 am
Perhaps Peter Ladner could write a book on the subject of credible sources, new man’s recycling values and other green misdemeanors …
Glissandro Remmy 27
Better yet, how about Glissando Remmy’s Compendium of All Things Green, Purple and Pink?
45 MB // Apr 11, 2012 at 10:45 am
@ Chris K # 42, there is actually a couple of tiny gems buried in gman’s pile of refuse (#33).
Several local landfills have a subsurface methane collection system (i.e. buried pipes) which vent the methane into a chamber housed in a building. Some of them flare off the methane, which seems to me almost as wasteful as venting it into the atmosphere.
Methane gas collection could be very efficient if the landfill is capped by a neoprene membrane with a gas collection system below the membrane surface. I’ve seen membranes balloon like a beached whale if the gas collection isn’t adequate.
As I reiterated in a previous post, the Vancouver land fill in Burns Bog could collect methane and burn it to produce steam to generate electricity and heat. Combusted methane is cleaner than letting it vent into the atmosphere, and far cleaner than burning garbage in giant incinerators which generate fine particulates even with the best scrubbers, as well as GHGs.
The steam heat could be piped to nearby greenhouses, which then would only require backup heat sources during maintenance downtimes. The bog itself generates methane from peat, and this may also be tapped near the edges of the landfill. There is a limitation to the rate that methane ‘fuel’ is generated by decomposition of organics below, and that should be factored in.
The sale of electricity and heat distribution to local grids and agriculture can offset the system’s construction + financing costs with revenue, and in summer when greenhouses don’t need supplemental non-solar heat, the steam can generate more electricity. I can’t say with assurance that such a system will defray its costs entrirely, but it’s a sure bet it will help lower the tax draw.
This doesn’t mean that landfilling should be wildly expanded and recycling + composting diminished. Gman’s other tiny gem thrown into his vat of muck was the cost and environmental impact of transporting garbage. As Tessa and others said, it’s more economical to reduce waste at the source and thus offset transport costs. I find we can roll our black bin to the curb every two or three weeks now that we chuck kitchen waste into the green bin and recycle as much of everything else as we can.
Re: house demolition, economics will dictate results. Only the big, valuable Douglas fir beams and heritage millwork / stained glass and sash windows / doors and flooring is recycled. Copper pipes are recycled mostly because they are relatively easy to get at, as is rebar when an excavator is used to break up old concrete. Old asphalt shingles and gypsum are supposed to be recycled in separate bins, but I see many contractors binning it all in one. Until there are much higher dump fees for house demolition, it’s status quo.
46 Chris Keam // Apr 11, 2012 at 10:57 am
I have no argument with Gman’s link, just his original over-simplistic assertion. Any realistic attempt at waste reduction, just as with transportation issues, demands multiple solutions that suit the situation at hand.
47 gman // Apr 11, 2012 at 11:30 am
MB,what are you 12 yrs.old.Pathetic comment MB.Whatever you do don’t let the facts change your emotionally driven BS theories.The difference between you and me is I let the data help me form my opinions and you attack the messenger if it doesn’t agree with your preconceived crap. You really are a goof.
48 Chris Keam // Apr 11, 2012 at 11:52 am
You need to provide some facts to back up your idea for methane reclamation from undifferentiated waste in a landfill Gman.
Otherwise your name-calling just looks like a desperate attempt to turn attention away from your unsubstantiated claim.
49 gman // Apr 11, 2012 at 11:53 am
And here is another little taste of reality. http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/article/20120213/KAMLOOPS0101/120219939/-1/kamloops/cache-creek-landfill-plant-to-create-power-from-methane
50 MB // Apr 11, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Gee, man, #47.
Sticks and stones.
You have your “facts”, I have my decades of experience.
51 gman // Apr 11, 2012 at 12:13 pm
Looks like thing are moving along nicely. http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/article/20120327/KAMLOOPS0101/120329833/-1/kamloops/cache-creek-landfill-to-use-super-quiet-lng-trucks
52 gman // Apr 11, 2012 at 12:19 pm
Never mind the facts MB is having a vision.
53 MB // Apr 11, 2012 at 12:21 pm
By “Factchecker” #61 in a previous post:
Since September 2003, a beneficial use system owned by Maxim Power Corporation has been operating at the City of Vancouver Landfill at Burns Bog. Maxim pipes LFG to CanAgro Greenhouses, and at the greenhouse burns the gas generating 5.55 MW of electricity for sale to B.C. Hydro and 100,000 GJ/year of heat for sale to CanAgro.
The project results in the recovery of approximately 500,000 GJ/year of energy, the total energy requirements of 3,000 to 4,000 homes, and results in a reduction of more than 230,000 tonnes per year CO2 equivalents or the emissions of approximately 45,000 automobiles. The City of Vancouver will receive revenues of approximately $400,000 per year for the duration of the 20- year contract period.
That conversation too Segwayed into landfill gas heating food-producing greenhouses, which came from the notion that the ALR should be subdivided to create “affordable” housing.
http://francesbula.com/uncategorized/some-condos-are-selling-like-slushies-in-hell-but-not-all/
54 MB // Apr 11, 2012 at 12:24 pm
Gman, you are overlooking the fact that I actually agreed with two of your points.
Though your delivery sucks, you are a sentient being capable of hitting on a good point now and again.
55 gman // Apr 11, 2012 at 4:33 pm
I think I’m going to buy some garburater futures. Thats where most of the kitchen waste is going to end up,right down the sink.
56 Bill // Apr 11, 2012 at 5:52 pm
@gman #55
If you want to diversify and hedge your investments you may want to include rat traps for those people that embrace recycling food waste.
57 gman // Apr 11, 2012 at 6:01 pm
Bill#56 Good point Bill,this might turn out to be a good year after all.I might look into drain snakes also,I’m predicting a large uptic in plugged pipes.
58 gman // Apr 12, 2012 at 1:16 am
Chris K #42,I’m still waiting.
59 Chris Keam // Apr 12, 2012 at 9:50 pm
Gman:
Sorry, I have a life outside the Internet.
From page 5 of your original document:
“2.0 TECHNOLOGIES AND BEST MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
2.1 DIVERSION OF ORGANIC WASTE
The source of GHG emissions from landfills is the organic waste content (i.e., leaf and
yard material [L&YM], food waste, wood waste, paper, etc.) that undergoes anaerobic
decomposition inside the oxygen-depleted landfill and produces LFG. These BMPs
propose diverting source-separated organic (SSO) materials away from the landfill, thus
preventing generation of LFG.”
The document goes on to suggest that the best way to deal with organic waste is as close to the source as possible. So, while your idea isn’t impossible, it’s not an ideal solution. I’d call it a draw, but will certainly admit you aren’t completely incorrect as I originally thought and apologize for lumping your remarks in with Brilliant’s comments.
60 gman // Apr 14, 2012 at 1:15 am
Nice try Chris your cherry picking and your painful apology really doesn’t cut it .Everything I said is true and proven and is functioning now.Its 2012 Chris get with the program this technology has been around for sixty years hell I can run my car on woodsmoke,open your mind man.We are a part of nature we leave a trail but so does a slug.
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