Last year’s decision by China, for instance, to no longer buy recyclable waste for reasons of its own economic interest, already impacts the blue box you take to the curb. Not just what’s in it, but the fact its days as a waste disposal system are numbered. Municipalities recently sorted and sold those streamed materials, which helped pay collection costs. Now they pay users of recycled materials to accept them. The economic benefits have not just evaporated, but reversed. Recyclable waste, clean plastics products especially, pile up unused because of fallen demand. Storing them in limbo is not just costly, but clearly no solution.
Addressing the underpinning economic issues can’t be done locally, any more than you can steer and ocean liner from the bow. The Trudeau Government’s decision to curb plastic use in Canada is action by our only governing authority strong enough to take on the petrochemical sector’s $11,000,000,000 annual output of virgin resin, source of plastics. Next month, plastic bags will be banned in Prince Edward Island, a provincial government decision. The Ford Government’s pending decision to shift over-packaging costs from municipalities to manufacturing and retailing corporations which cause the problem will be another example of governments actually governing.
As for acting locally, municipal government is making major decisions to change the character of Muskoka waste management, because of direct operating costs, and because things go bad fast when garbage gets out of control.
Priority for fibre products over plastic wherever possible will pay dividends, as markets for cardboard and paper (except low-grade paper) are strong, and will continue to hold.
High intensity incineration of waste deserves a much bigger place in the equation. It is far less damaging environmentally than most alternatives, and produces revenues in a number of ways, from capture of gases to providing energy for industrial purposes, and can be a profit centre. Ontario municipalities pay a big tab to truck garbage to Michigan for dumping; in Germany, a state-of-the-art incineration facility near Cologne receives trainloads of waste from as far away as Italy. In B.C., incinerating plastic laden garbage powers a waste-to-energy concrete manufacturing plant and kiln. Like the crematorium near Barrie, the extremely high temperature of the process produces little pollution.
Vetoing useless plastic items from blue box collectibles is necessary. Ontario’s municipality of North Glengarry has already blazed this trail: if it crinkles, or if it stretches, it’s banned.
We probably don’t need a crystal ball to see that an economically and environmentally forced shift is in our future, from a society endlessly consuming resources, to a circular system reusing more of them and vapourizing what’s really garbage.
