“Summer 2024 shatters records for severe weather damage: Over $7 billion in insured losses from floods, fires and hailstorms.” That’s the headline from a recent Insurance Bureau of Canada blog post. The post highlights the unprecedented number and severity of natural disasters across the country that resulted in a 406% increase in the number of property insurance claims compared to the 20-year average. “These events are escalating at a shocking rate and Canada is simply not prepared”, said Celyeste Power, IBC president.
Continue reading “Record Severe Weather Costs Canada $7 Billion: TAF’s 2023 Emissions Report Show Us What’s Next”BEA Completes Healthy and Connected Bramalea Project
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority has teamed with City of Brampton, the Federal Government’s Healthy Communities Initiative, United Way, and various community partners, including the BEA, to deliver projects in Bramalea’s K, E, and F sections. This is all part of the Bramalea Sustainable Neighbourhood Action Plan (SNAP). The Bramalea SNAP integrates local community interests and sustainability objectives under the overarching theme of working together for a green, healthy, and welcoming Bramalea neighbourhood. The Action Plan is made up of six themes, each with their own integrated initiatives:
Continue reading “BEA Completes Healthy and Connected Bramalea Project”BEA Participates in Rally & Ride Event
This past week the Ontario government introduced legislation that will be incredibly damaging to Ontario’s environment. Bill 212 will fast track construction of highway 413 by removing the requirement for it to go through an environmental assessment. The bill will also will allow the province to override municipal planning departments and limit the installation or force the removal of bike lanes in Ontario’s cities and towns. While this bill may be brilliant politics, it is terrible public policy. Here’s why.
Continue reading “BEA Participates in Rally & Ride Event”Community Discusses Risks of Waste Burning in Brampton
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.
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.
Brampton Environmental Alliance Community Session
A reminder that the Brampton Environmental Alliance, along with Environmental Defence and Sierra Club Peel will co-host a community information session tomorrow night starting at 7:30pm at Century Gardens Recreation Centre. See the BEA Events page for more information and to register to attend this important event.
Litter Reduction Charter Launch & Signing Event
In the summer of 2023, BEA member Bill Godfrey pitched an idea to Brampton City Council that the City should develop a strategy to become the first litter-free city in Canada. Bill is the founder of a local community group, People Against Littering. Since 2019 he and his enthusiastic volunteers have organized and participated in hundreds of clean-up events across the City and have documented picking up over 3,000,000 pieces of litter! Despite these efforts litter remains a persistent problem that is both an eye-sore and a health hazard to visitors and residents alike.
Continue reading “Litter Reduction Charter Launch & Signing Event”Have Your Say on Brampton’s Mobility Plan
The City of Brampton is updating the current 2015 Transportation Master Plan. The revised Mobility Plan will guide City investment in transportation infrastructure over the coming years. The Plan will move the City towards the 2040 Vision to be “a mosaic of safe, integrated transportation choices and new modes, contributing to civic sustainability, and emphasizing walking, cycling, and transit.”
Did You Know?
- Transportation trips in Brampton nearly doubled from 1996 to 2015 from 480,000 to 880,000,
- Travel to and from work represents 64.8% of all travel trips in the City,
- 78% of Brampton’s transportation trips end in either Brampton or Mississauga. Only 22% travel outside of Peel Region!
- For work only trips 62% end in either Brampton or Mississauga while only 38% travel to areas outside of Peel Region.
- Currently 86% of travel trips are made by personal vehicle, (car, SUV, pick-up, etc), while only 14% use walking, cycling or transit.
- 48% (426,000) of these trips are short trips of less than 5 kilometers. Only 13% of these short trips are made by active modes, (walking, cycling).
- Only 1% of trips between 3 and 5 kilometers are made by active modes.
- A 5km bike ride takes less than 20 minutes.
- Shifting even a portion of these short trips to active modes could take about 100,000 cars off the roads in Brampton each day. Imagine what that would do for pollution and traffic congestion!
Source: 2016 Transportation Tomorrow Survey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_1kC3WTsHU
Heat Pump Chronicles Vol 8.
This is the eighth in a series of posts on our journey to navigate government grants and loans available for home energy retrofits and to replace our natural gas furnace with a cold-climate heat pump. Click here to see all articles in the series .
I want to share our first experience with our heat pump now working as an air conditioner. In a word, FANTASTIC!
Once the weather gets consistently milder my habit has been to turn off the furnace and open the windows to bring in some fresh air. This year we were able to do that in early May. I have typically only turned the A/C on when we experience hot weather over multiple days.
Continue reading “Heat Pump Chronicles Vol 8.”BEA delegates to Peel Regional Council
The Emerald Energy from Waste facility has been operating in Peel since 1992, initially built and operated by Algonquin Power. The Region cancelled a waste burning contract with Algonquin in 2012 but the facility was sold to Emerald shortly thereafter and has been continuing operations by consuming waste from industrial, commercial and institutional sources.
In 2016, the Region considered building its own waste burning facility but cancelled those plans due to concerns about the pollution a second facility would emit. Instead it embarked on a plan to divert 75% of its waste by 2034, through a combination of improved policies, procedures and, technologies related to waste reduction, reuse, recycling and, composting.
Continue reading “BEA delegates to Peel Regional Council”BEA and Partners to Deliver Summer Programming
Post Author: Cindy Evans
This summer, with financial support from TRCA’s “Building a Healthy and Connected Bramalea” project, the BEA is providing 3 programs to the residents of Brampton – specifically aimed at engaging residents living in the E,F and K sections of Bramalea. This area has been highlighted as part of TRCA’s Sustainable Neighbourhood Action Plan (SNAP). The objective of Bramalea SNAP is to foster neighbourhood revitalization that integrates local community interests and sustainability objectives under the overarching theme of working together for a green, healthy, and welcoming Bramalea SNAP neighbourhood.
Continue reading “BEA and Partners to Deliver Summer Programming”