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Saturday July 21, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday July 21, 2018

These are dark days for recycling and composting in Hamilton

If you’re among the thousands of citizens who try to do the right things about recycling and waste diversion, these are not good times.

It’s a discouraging double-whammy.

May 2, 2018

Part one happened early this year. After years of imploring citizens to put items like coffee cup lids, Styrofoam and black plastic in the recycling box, city officials had to reverse that. It was, in the words of city recycling manager Emil Prpic, a “market-driven” eco-dilemma. The problem is, virtually no one wanted to buy those recycled goods. In January, China, which was the giant in the buying market, cracked down on imported plastics. It applied new more stringent purity standards that ruled out most of our plastics.

There must be more buyers than China? Yes. But China has been voracious, consuming more than half the world’s recyclables. There isn’t adequate infrastructure yet to make up for that lost capacity.

So in Hamilton, and many other municipalities, recyclables have to be stored or handled by a third party. Tragically, some of this stuff is ending up in our landfills.

That was bad enough, but then more recently the second whammy hit. The city’s composting plant on Burlington Street East was stinking. It has been odiferous for a long time, but recently the problem has been getting worse. Last month, responding to growing citizen complaints, the plant was closed until a solution can be found.

April 24, 2018

So that food and organic waste you have been separating? It’s going into our only landfill site in Glanbrook. Something like 660 tonnes — daily.

So no food waste recycling. Limited plastics recycling, with the most common types — so-called low grade plastics — being not recyclable because no one wants them. If they’re mixed in with other, legitimate recycling, they contaminate them and have to be sorted by hand otherwise the entire load is useless.

Just to add insult to injury, we’re living under a new government that doesn’t appear to believe the environment matters at all, and next door to a superpower that is losing its mind and racing backwards on environmental protection. (Source: Hamilton Spectator) 

 

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Thursday February 23, 2012

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday February 23, 2012

Council dumps biweekly garbage

Hamilton city councillors have officially disposes of the idea of biweekly garbage pickup in favour of a new program that’s both more expensive and less effective at diverting waste from landfill.

After hours of debate Tuesday, councillors approved weekly garbage pickup with a one-bag limit, but introduced 26 free tags to put out extra bags. That system, brokered by councillors Russ Powers and Chad Collins behind closed doors before Tuesday’s meeting, will be implemented in April 2013 when the city’s existing waste collection contracts run out.

However, the councillors’ chosen option will cost $1.4 million more each year than the biweekly alternative staff suggested. And, staff warned that unlike biweekly garbage collection — which would force people to increase their diversion — the new one-bag plus tags option will drag down the city’s 49 per cent waste diversion rate.

“As an environmentalist, I want to see long-term thinking about sustainability and doing the right thing for future generations,” said Lynda Lukasik, president of Environment Hamilton. “As a taxpayer, I want to see councillors stepping back, weighing it out and saying, ‘What’s the most fiscally responsible thing to do for the municipality — not just now, but into the future?’ Sadly, I think the numbers suggest that a different decision was made.”

Tuesday’s debate was the fourth time council dealt with garbage pickup this year. In the three previous debates, councillors couldn’t come to an agreement about whether to adopt a biweekly option.

Before Tuesday’s meeting, half of council was prepared to move ahead with biweekly pickup, while the other half wanted to increase the weekly bag limit to two bags. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)