Mountains of trash with nowhere to go in Ontario

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Trash Troubles

MUSKOKA – Garbage in Ontario is a mess.
Some municipalities are building controversial incinerators to burn tonnes of garbage while others face a dire situation as space in landfills disappears.
Communities are flailing as they try to manage waste within their own borders. Some are sending garbage out of town. Some are still working on setting waste diversion targets. Others are revising them. And some do not have waste diversion targets at all.
The District Municipality of Muskoka has a diversion target of 60 per cent by 2012 but currently sits at about 48 per cent.
At least six communities surveyed by Metroland for this special report on provincewide trash troubles have landfills that will run out of space within 10 years. The mountains of trash that Ontarians are throwing into the garbage instead of their blue boxes are forcing communities to try to find more space in their already bulging landfills.
But landfills are difficult to build because government of Ontario approvals required to create new facilities are hard to get and the process is lengthy and costly.
Tony White, Muskoka commissioner of engineering and public works, said it could take five to 10 years to get the necessary approvals for a new landfill site.
The Ministry of Environment has not approved a new landfill site since 1999. Since that time, 147 small landfills have closed, leaving Ontario with 958 existing active landfills. But many of those are small and not classified as capable of taking on a major municipality’s trash.
Muskoka’s Rosewarne site will hold 950,000 tonnes of trash and will act as the principle landfill for Muskoka when the Gravenhurst and Huntsville sites reach capacity in about five years.
The main reason trash is creating problems is because municipal landfills are filling up with garbage that should be recycled or reused, including cardboard, plastic bottles, milk cartons and paper.
The biggest offender is plastic
A report by Stewardship Ontario shows that about 176,500 tonnes of plastics – including 30,906 tonnes of plastic bottles – were chucked into the garbage instead of the recycling box in 2009, the last year for which provincewide figures are available. That means three-quarters of all that plastic – including 44 per cent of plastic bottles – ends up in landfills.
Garbage bag limits
Some municipalities are struggling to divert more waste. In Toronto, each resident gets two free garbage tags a year to put out extra trash, but additional tags cost $3.10 each. But Toronto’s waste-diversion rate is still low at about 47 per cent.
White said expanding the green bin program and reducing the amount of trash residents can put curbside may help Muskoka reach its diversion targets, but there are issues with the idea.
“Reducing the (garbage) bag limit would drive people to be more diligent about recycling, but that only impacts people on the curbside collection program and there are a lot of people who use communal bins (in Muskoka). It’s impossible to police bag limits with unsupervised communal bins,” he said.
In Muskoka the bag limit is three per week, though households in urban centres with green bin programs are limited to two per week. Making garbage less appealing while keeping blue box programs accessible may be a logical route, said White.
“It would make sense to charge to pick up garbage and provide people with an incentive. Essentially you’re saying to people, ‘The waste that comes out of your house, if you’re going to stick it in a black bag at the end of your driveway, we’re going to charge you $3. But if you sort it and put it in your blue box it’s free,’” he said.
The use of garbage bag tags in Muskoka was discussed during a long-range solid waste management plan workshop in 2005, but the idea was scrapped.
Muskoka introduced its green bin program in 2008 in the urban centers of Bracebridge, Gravenhurst and Huntsville.
Expanding the green bin program
Mark Pringle, manager of solid waste for the district, said staff is submitting a proposal to district council during the 2012 budget processes that would expand the green bin program to smaller urban centres, such as Port Sydney and Port Carling.
Pringle said the implementation of the green bin program has increased the region’s diversion rates.
“It seems to be working quite well and we have increasing amounts of kitchen waste coming into the sites each year. The resulting compost is given away on Earth Day to residents. That’s been a popular program,” he said. “We certainly have no compost left the day after.”
But Muskoka is still working on reaching its waste diversion targets. These targets are used to set goals as to how much waste the district can keep out of its landfills by sending it to a recycling, compost or reuse facility, for example.
Ontario’s undiverted waste is aggravating landfill problems across the province.
Lafleche Environmental Inc. near Moose Creek in Ottawa was the last new landfill approved in 1999. It was created on a former wetland about 70 kilometers southeast of the capital.
In 1996, the District of Muskoka took control of area municipal landfills, with many smaller sites closing down. Only three remain and several transfer sites now exist.
Durham Region is building a heavily protested incinerator to replace landfilling, and is currently sending most waste to Model City, N.Y. Durham expects its incinerator to be open by then.
Exporting waste
Many communities cannot afford to build an incinerator. They are simply trying to create more space within the landfills they own, despite opposition from environmentalists.
In Muskoka, two landfills are set to close within six years: Gravenhurst and Stisted landfills.
The district’s long-range waste management study determined that rather than shipping waste out of the region or investing in costly incineration equipment, an expanded landfill site in Bracebridge and increased reuse, recycling and composting programs would be more beneficial.
The district received approval to expand the Rosewarne Landfill in 2009. The site will accommodate the region’s waste until at least 2035.
“The short answer is Muskoka prefers to handle our waste within Muskoka’s boundaries,” said Pringle, referring to conclusions that came out of the district’s waste management study workshops.
“The input received is that Muskoka must deal with its waste within Muskoka. Exporting waste is not really on the table at this point. We’re going with the expanded landfill,” he said.
Seeking other areas to ship municipal waste, such as the U.S., is not the best solution, said Rob Cook, Ontario Waste Management Association’s chief executive officer.
“Managing our waste is a hard service like our waste water and we certainly wouldn’t rely on the U.S. to give us water,” he said.

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