According to Statistics Canada’s biennial report on the waste management industry, it’s been found that Ontario consumers and businesses are sending more waste to landfills despite growing public awareness of its environmental impacts and financial costs.
Even before learning of this statistic, the Ontario government took initiative and, with the Waste Diversion Act, came up with a goal of diverting 60 percent of the province’s waste by 2008.
To follow up on this legislation and to do their part in achieving this goal, the Town of Fort Frances’ Public Works department has been busy.
On May 7, 2008, Clayton Sampson, the Northern Ontario “Blue Box” program technical advisor for Waste Diversion Ontario came to Fort Frances and took a tour of the facilities, noting areas where improvements could be made in the recycling program.
He compiled a report noting several changes and currently Public Works is in the process of implementing a few.
Operations and Facilities manager Doug Brown reported that landfill costs are actually much lower than those of recycling—costing the town approximately 10 percent of the cost of recycling.
However, the new legislation coupled with the weight of the environmental impact that having an overflowing landfill has, the town is obligated to recycle more—despite the high costs.
Sampson has recommended ways that will make recycling more cost effective for the town and altogether more efficient.
Some of the recommendations that Sampson outlined are:
•apply for grants in order to meet the “best practices” standards and build a new facility;
•turn the local facility into a regional facility on a fee-for-service basis; and
•turn the current partial “bag tag” system into a full user fee system.
Up until now, Public Works has been operating the recycling depot out of a rented facility owned George Armstrong Co. Ltd.
But Brown reported that by July 16, the town will no longer be renting and will begin to work out of a garage behind the Public Works building on Sixth Street.
They have already applied for grants to build a new, upgraded facility and have received a two-phase grant called a continuous improvement fund from Waste Diversion Ontario which will basically allow for the planning and design, and construction, of such a facility.
Within the planning phase, they will decide the best course of action to create a new facility, determining updated industry standards and researching new pieces of equipment and then figuring out which changes will best suit the needs of the town.
Next, the construction phase will begin and the plans will begin to take shape.
As a first course of action, Brown began looking into a way of “densifying” the recyclable materials so as to have the capacity to ship larger quantities at a time.
Currently, the town is using a walking floor trailer that is 53 feet long and eight feet wide to ship the recycled materials to a plant in Winnipeg. At their present densifying capacity, they are able to haul approximately 10 tonnes per load.
However, there are different available options in packing equipment that can increase that load to 23 or even 33 tonnes per load.
They are also looking to implement a 24/7 drop off center at the facility to aid the bi-weekly curbside pick-up in capturing recycled materials. They are planning to have a user-friendly series of bins for co-mingled recycling.
Brown predicted that “before the snow flies, everything will be in place,” and doesn’t think that the designing phase will take too long, so the town will be able to get a move on the construction and get it all done as soon as they can.
As for the “bag tag” initiative and the upgrade to a regional facility, only time will tell what will come of them.
The “bag tags,” Brown noted, is a political decision.
Currently, the town operates a partial-fee “bag tag” system where each home is allowed one bag of garbage without fee with a charge of $1.50 for each additional bag.
A full-fee “bag tag” system is one of the recommendations of the advisory report and if implemented, would see residents for each and every bag.
“Bag tags work,” remarked Brown. “They force you to recycle more and it also becomes a fairer system.”
“Waste then becomes a consumption fee, just like hydro. If you put out a lot of waste instead of recycling, you pay more for it, and if you recycle more, you pay less,” he noted.
The advisory report promoted full user fee systems as being highly effective in diverting recycling. It has been demonstrated by numerous studies that partial “bag tag” systems are far less effective than the full system in that respect.
“We don’t subsidize the hydro meter on your house through anything, but when we allow people to use one free can of garbage we’re actually subsidizing that through the tax base,” explained Brown.
“Your taxes are collected and then subsidize the waste system whereas, [with a full bag-tag system] waste could just become another utility—much like water or sewer—and can become completely self-funded,” he added.
Brown indicated that currently the waste system is annually subsidized by roughly $60,000 from the tax base to make it feasible.
If the move is made to a full “bag tag” service and if each of the 3,900 households in town put out one bag of garbage and pay a fee of $1.50, revenue is generated that will help to offset the demand on the tax base for the provision of garbage collection service.
In other words, “bag tags” are effective ways of reducing the costs of waste services for the town which will alleviate the strain on the tax base and will open up opportunities to fund much-needed projects—like road repairs.
As for creating a facility that will accommodate the whole region, Brown noted that it requires a lot of planning and construction work but that it is a possibility.
Currently, the local landfill site has approximately 27 years left in it, but Brown explained that if some plans are executed and people are co-operative with those the plans, that its life can be extended up to 127 years.
He said that there is a lot of capacity in the landfill but regardless, it is still important that the town practices the three ‘R’ initiatives : Reduce, Re-use, Recycle.
With recycling it is great to know that you are cutting back on discarded materials and are increasing the amount of materials that can be reformed and returned to the marketplace, added Brown.
With the new facility, there will be enhanced services all for a better cost.
In other news with Fort Frances Public Works, Brown was pleased to announce that the annual Household Hazardous Waste Day is scheduled to run on Saturday, Sept. 13 from 9 a.m.-3 p.m.
On that day, it will be free for residents to bring all household hazardous wastes or special wastes in to the facility.
These waste products include:
•paint and coatings in their containers that they’re contained in;
•solvents and the containers that they’re contained in;
•oil filtres and lubricant oil containers;
•dry cell batteries;
•antifreeze in the containers that they’re contained in;
•propane cylinders and tanks;
•fungicides, herbicides, insecticides, and pesticides in their containers,
•fertilizers in their containers;
•lead acid car batteries;
•nickel cadmium batteries,
•waste oil;
•waste flammable liquids (gasoline or diesel that are mixed with water); •waste aerosols in the containers they’re contained in; and
•mercury, acid and basics in the containers that they’re contained in.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
