Townships face challenges with waste diversion

Peggy Revell

While the younger generation has been raised to know the importance of recycling, recently-released data from Waste Diversion Ontario (WDO) shows municipalities across Northern Ontario are nowhere near the provincial average for waste diversion.
From data collected for 2007, Ontario residents, on average, generated more than a kilogram of waste every day, or 385 kg a year. As well, the average amount of waste diversion of municipalities across the province is sitting only at 39.2 percent.
Here in Northern Ontario, however, Fort Frances ranked 184th out of 206 listed municipalities, with a diversion rate of 14.3 percent.
Emo was ranked 191st, with a diversion rate of 13.17 percent, while Sioux Narrow-Nestor Falls was worse still at 194th (12.55 percent).
For those district municipalities not listed in the data, waste diversion remains a challenge since the end of the Northwest Ontario Recycle Association back in 2002.
“[NORA] got to be too expensive and hard to find markets for some of the products, so it ended up folding, and after that we didn’t pursue it [recycling] very actively,” Morley Reeve Gary Gamsby admitted.
Recycling programs are not mandated for municipalities as small as Morley, he noted, although council there has investigated any suggestions arising over possible waste diversion programs.
Unfortunately, he said these have all turned out to be inefficient cost-wise.
“The markets for it, most of the recycled markets, are not very great. It’s costly to ship, it’s costly to process, to store,” Reeve Gamsby stressed, adding the one exception is aluminum, for which there probably will always be a market.
The Township of Chapple saw its small recycling program shut down earlier this year.
“It always has been a tough thing for us because the volume is too small,” explained Reeve Peter Van Heyst.
Until recently, Chapple’s landfill manager had found a market for such things as cardboard and aluminum, and these sort of recyclables were used to offset costs associated with managing the landfill, he noted.
But while larger centres can be efficient with their recycling programs, Reeve Van Heyst said recycling programs in smaller townships like his sometimes just don’t make environmental sense.
“Seeing that it takes a special pick-up route, maybe we were doing more harm than good by putting more carbon in the air trying to collect it then what maybe we would be saving,” he reasoned.
“And also, we don’t have any storage really. There’s no market really for any of that material right now.
“I think if it was done in more of a district-wide scale, it might be more advantageous,” Reeve Van Heyst added.
Both reeves also stressed provincial support is needed.
“There’s just not a good system in place in the province to make it worthwhile,” Reeve Gamsby argued. “Provincially we have to have a program that will make it feasible for communities to recycle, and then also a program that will make it cost-effective to buy products that are made from recycled material.”
Cost is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to running a recycling program, agreed Emo Mayor Ed Carlson, adding provincial and federal assistance would “be excellent.”
“It’s a fairly expensive deal for us really,” he noted “You have to rent these bins from whomever is going to be on contract with you, and then from that point you have to decide how much recycling you’re going to need.”
Location also is a challenge.
“Where do you set up a location?” Mayor Carlson asked. “It’s got to be somewhere that’s central for everybody to actually use, or if it’s not convenient they won’t do it.
“You have to try and make it as convenient as possible,” he stressed.
Despite the cost, and despite what the WDO data says, Mayor Carlson said Emo residents have been enthusiastic about recycling.
“It’s gone over very well in Emo to the point that bins are always full and we’re having to get more bins in,” he noting, though adding there is always room for improvement.
“It is something we are looking at as a council,” he said. “It has been brought up to our attention at this point, but we haven’t made any long-term plans of what to do.”
Changes and improvements certainly are a concern Emo council plans to look into down the road, Mayor Carlson said, where they will “take a long-term view of it and find out what best suits the need of the community.”
While he can see where other townships are coming from when it comes to closing down or not having a recycling program, Mayor Carlson vowed Emo will not follow suit any time in the future.
“I think it’s just really important that people participate in it from my standpoint, [and] we do the best job we possibly can and be as efficient as we possibly can,” he said, noting that those using the bins can help make the system even more efficient by ensuring items are broken down as small as possible.
But waste diversion through recycling is only one aspect of being environmentally-friendly, Reeve Van Heyst said.
“Another issue I have is with the bottled water,” he remarked. “I would like to see people, instead of purchasing water—we do have high-quality water in the municipality, it’s number one—that people would use the water we have.
“It would also reduce the recycling, so we won’t have the empty bottles floating around.
“I think that everybody should have a serious look at the things they do, and we have to ask ourselves ‘what can I do, as an individual, to reduce recycling in the way I buy products, whatever,’” he stressed.
“My grandfather used to say, ‘Improve the world, but begin by yourself,’ and I think we should all be doing that, in all facets of living, really.”
Doug Brown, Operations and Facilities manager for the Town of Fort Frances, noted last week that while the town’s numbers aren’t near the provincial average, it’s hard to make direct comparisons since each municipality runs its own recycling programs.
As well, certain factors are out the town’s control.
For example, to reach the WDO’s target diversion rate of 60 percent, diversion of organic materials—such as through community composters—are required, and this requires a population and capacity Fort Frances doesn’t have, Brown said.
Comparatively, Kenora diverted 29.7 percent of its waste, placing it in 93rd place, while Dryden came in 84th with 31.89 percent diversion, Atikokan ranked 144th with a diversion rate of 20.9, and Thunder Bay ranked 147th with a 20.6 percent diversion rate.
The Town of Mono ranked the highest with its diversion rate of 54.69 percent while the Sault North Waste Management Council placed 206th, with a diversion rate of only 1.94 percent.
Upon the release of the WDO data, Environment minister John Gerretsen stated that despite Northwestern Ontario ranking lower on the list, it was municipalities such as those in southern Ontario, with larger populations, that still were creating the bulk of the province’s trash despite their higher diversion rates.