This past Wednesday evening about 50 Brampton residents met in the community room at Century Gardens Recreation Centre to learn more about Emerald Energy from Waste’s proposal to become the largest waste burning facility in Canada. The event was jointly organized by Environmental Defence, Sierra Club Peel, and Brampton Environmental Alliance. Miranda Baksh introduced the speakers and moderated a Q & A panel session, that was followed by open questions from the audience.

First to speak was Karen Wirsig, a Researcher specializing in plastics and Senior Program Manager with Environmental Defence. Karen noted that the Emerald plant is located just inside Brampton’s southeast border at 7656 Bramalea Road. It currently burns 182,000 tonnes of waste each year. The company has a proposal pending Ontario government approval that would allow it to more than quadruple capacity to 900,000 tonnes per year or about 1/3 of all of the waste generated in Ontario. That means the plant would need to truck in garbage from all over the Province in order to support its business model.

Karen shared several concerns about the current plant and its proposed expansion. First, while the company promotes energy from waste as a climate friendly way of producing energy, it is anything but. It turns out that burning waste produces 50% more carbon emissions per kilowatt-hour generated than coal and almost 3X the emissions compared with burning natural gas to create electricity.

Second, the household waste stream contains about 13% plastics, 5% building material including preserved wood, 3% Textiles, including a high proportion of man-made materials, and 9% of other household waste including e-waste. When burned, these products produce a range of chemicals that are known to cause health problems including cancer, endocrine system disruption, and respiratory issues such as asthma. The company’s own data forecasts, that, with the expansion, the levels of these chemicals in the plant’s discharge would significantly exceed both Provincial and Federal guidelines by 107 to 375%!

Third, the emissions from the plant’s stacks are self-monitored by the company. They are subject to inspection by the Province but that happens only once per year, and then only after the plant has been notified of the coming inspection.

Finally, more than 50% of the waste stream is food and other organic waste. As anyone knows who has ever tried to burn left-overs on a campfire, food waste doesn’t burn well because of its high moisture content. It sizzles, smolders and works to put out the flames. The same is true in a waste burn facility. Often natural gas must be added to the waste stream in order to drive off the moisture and keep the material burning. In other words, burning waste is neither good for human health nor environmentally friendly.

Next to speak was Emily Alfred, a Senior Waste Campaigner at the Toronto Environmental Alliance, (TEA). Emily said that only about 30-40% of Ontario’s waste is residential, the rest comes from industry and institutional sources that have a much poorer track record of separating, recycling and reusing waste. Emily’s message is that there are better ways to deal with garbage than burning it. It just takes political will and leadership to define appropriate policy.

For instance, as stated, about half of the waste stream in Ontario is organics and burning it is very inefficient. Putting it in landfill is also problematic as buried organic material breaks down into methane in a process known as anerobic digestion. This methane is toxic, flammable, and a greenhouse gas more powerful than carbon dioxide. Food waste can, however, be safely composted and returned to the land as rich soil for food production. Several US states including, California, New York, Connecticut and Vermont, as well as cities such as New York NY, Austin TX and Vancouver BC have banned organic waste from being burned or put in landfill thus forcing municipalities to compost instead.

Emily explained that plastics represent the second largest percentage of waste material much of which can recycled or reused if separated properly. A significant amount of plastics pollution comes from food and beverage containers. Currently Ontario and Manitoba are the only two Provinces in the country that do not have a non-alcoholic beverage container deposit system.

A recent report by Eunomia Research & Consulting Inc. finds that the most effective way for Ontario to achieve a 90% recovery rate for beverage containers is by expanding the province’s existing deposit system operated by The Beer Store by providing Ontarians with more retail and depot locations to take back bottles and cans to receive a 10-cent refund for each container.

Ontario’s current rate of non-alcoholic beverage container recycling is 51% according to the Canadian Beverage Association, (CBA). The CBA also reports that over 80% of Ontarians are favourably disposed to expanding container deposits to non-alcoholic beverage containers. Despite these facts, this past July, the Ontario government shelved plans to implement a deposit return system for non-alcoholic containers citing “significant costs” of the system that would have to be borne by small businesses and families at a time when living costs are so high. The fallacy of this argument is that we all bear the cost of pollution and environmental destruction it’s just that these costs are less immediate and less visible.

Emily also indicated that textiles represent a significant portion of the waste stream and should be recycled or reused. For instance, old clothes can be donated or swapped. Buy used instead of new clothing. Alter or repair clothes that are damaged or no longer fit. Shred unrepairable items for use as cloth rags or for stuffing pillows. Stained fabric can be redyed and used for useful things like headbands or handkerchiefs. Natural fabrics like cotton can be composted. And if you are installing new carpet in your home, use an installer like, Home Depot, Alexanian, S&R Flooring Concepts, or Golia Flooring which participate in the Aspera Carpet Recycling Program in Ontario.

Finally, if you live in a condominium or multi-unit apartment building, contact Emily at Toronto Environment Alliance for tips on how you can start a recycling program in your building.

The session wrapped up with Miranda moderating a panel discussion including Amisha Moorjani – business owner and BEA Board member, Steve Kirby – business owner and member of Sierra Club Peel’s Executive Committee, Divya Arora – Community Climate Council founding member and Youth Outreach Coordinator for David Suzuki Foundation as well as Karen and Emily. Steve and Amisha recently delegated to Peel Region and Brampton City Councils about the Emerald proposal. Both Steve and Amisha have taken steps to reduce the amount of waste from their business even though these efforts result in higher operational costs. For them it is a question of doing the right thing.

If you think, as we do, that the Emerald proposal is a mistake, take a few minutes to write a personal letter to your local MPP. But please do it soon as the Environment Minister will likely be rendering their verdict within the next few weeks.

Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment opposes waste burning

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6670342