pollution

Friday, March 6, 2015

Friday, March 6, 2015Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, March 6, 2015

K-Cup creator John Sylvan regrets inventing Keurig coffee pod system

K-Cup creator John Sylvan regrets inventing Keurig coffee pod systemThe man who invented the K-Cup coffee pod almost 20 years ago says he regrets doing so, and he can’t understand the popularity of the products that critics decry as an environmental catastrophe.

July 29, 2014

John Sylvan worked at Keurig in the 1990s when he devised a simple product that could create a small mug of coffee out of a plastic pod. Originally aiming it at office workers, Sylvan said he thought the product might have some limited appeal to people who would normally go Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts or other coffee chains in the morning, because now they could get a cup of coffee at work that was cheaper, faster, and no fuss.

“That would make it environmentally neutral, because you wouldn’t have those Starbucks cups [everywhere],” Sylvan told the CBC’s As It Happens in an interview. “The first market was the office coffee service market,” he said, adding he is “absolutely mystified” by his product’s popularity in homes.

Popularity doesn’t begin to describe it, as the K-Cup’s status is closer to ubiquity. Keurig Green Mountain’s annual revenues have climbed to almost $5 billion, up more than five-fold in five years, largely on the back of selling billions of K-Cups every year.

May 2, 2018

Keurig dominates what’s come to be a large and growing market. Research firm NPD Group recently estimated that about 40 per cent of Canadian homes have a single-serving coffee machine, and Canadians spent $95 million on them last year.

According to a wildly popular ad campaign against the product earlier this year, there are so many discarded K-Cups that if you lined them up it would be enough to circle the earth more than 10 times — and that’s just from one year’s worth of coffee pods.

As the man who invented them, Sylvan might have been pleased with their popularity. But he left the company in 1997, selling his ownership of the product for $50,000.

To this day, he still doesn’t understand why people like them. “I find them rather expensive,” he said. (Source: CBC News)

 

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

City wants to push ahead with Randle Reef work

Mayor Bob Bratina says Randle Reef project partners are searching for a way to begin work this year despite delays caused by over-budget construction bids.

April 27, 2002

Environment Canada recently revealed all construction bids have come in over budget for the first stage of the $138.9-million project to trap more than a million tonnes of coal tar sludge in Hamilton Harbour.

Work on building a steel-walled containment facility was supposed to start this spring, but may now be put off until sometime next year.

Bratina said he and city manager Chris Murray met with federal officials over the weekend and confirmed “absolute support” for the project, including the contentious decision to contain rather than dig up the pollution.

November 9, 2007

He said federal officials are also convinced the $139-million budget for the project is on target, despite “significant” budget overruns from all bidders.

Federal officials will meet with bidders in July to go over the disparities in detail.

But in the meantime, Bratina said the city and other project partners are keen to “push ahead” on some aspect of the stalled project this year, if possible.

December 20, 2012

He conceded any decision to hive off a portion of the project would need federal approval, but expressed hope more options would come out of talks with bidders next month.

“We really need to show the public that our commitment is there and we’re willing to start the project and deal with disparities as we go along.” (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

 

Friday April 27, 2002

April 27, 2002

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 27, 2002

Hamilton’s Randle Reef

There have been so many setbacks in cleaning up Randle Reef, the notorious dead zone in Hamilton Harbour, that it seemed as if a solution would take forever. So much for the litany of bad news associated with the toxic hot spot just west of Stelco’s Hilton Works. With key stakeholders now in agreement on a viable strategy for the cleanup, Hamilton is finally in position to correct one of the most pressing pollution problems in the harbour.

The stakeholders made a prudent choice in supporting a plan to cover the site and build a facility large enough to hold contaminated sediment from other areas in the bay. Capping Randle Reef was judged the most practical and cost-effective approach, and for good reason. The alternatives involved dredging the site, and other contaminated areas of the bay, and then trucking the waste away. It would be a messy, piecemeal, time-consuming and ultimately more expensive approach for the harbour as a whole.

The plan favoured by the stakeholders has the drawback of filling in more of the bay, which is never desirable. But there is a strong case that it’s an acceptable tradeoff in tackling not only the Randle Reef menace, but other contaminated areas in the bay which must be addressed. Under the preferred option, six to eight hectares of the harbour would be filled in. About 95,000 cubic metres of contaminated sediment at Randle Reef would be covered. The facility would be designed to accommodate another 200,000 cubic metres of contaminated sediment from elsewhere in the bay. (The Hamilton Spectator)

Wednesday September 20, 2000

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday September 20, 2000

Rennie Street Dump Stink

No matter how it adds up, that’s a lot of garbage; Visualize this: The 400,000 cubic metres of Rennie Street garbage are equivalent to the height of a 23-storey building.

Newspaper reporters tend to be better with words than numbers.And with numbers as with words, we try to tell a story in simple terms, making it as easy to understand as possible.

So, when it came to writing about the old Rennie Street dump — a place few Hamiltonians have visited — this reporter asked city officials how big it was, how much garbage was in it.

Almost no one around City Hall today was there when the dump was used, so answers were hard to come by.

None of the readily available documents said, for instance, it covered five hectares 10 metres deep.

But on Monday, after the city pleaded guilty to letting the dump pollute Red Hill Creek, waste management director Peter Dunn supplied part of a consultant’s report saying it held 400,000 cubic metres of garbage.

In an effort to help visualize that, to make it meaningful, this reporter tried to calculate how much that would be piled on the playing field at Ivor Wynne Stadium.
A quick calculation suggested two and a half storeys high, and that’s what appeared in the paper yesterday.

But on reflection that seemed too small for a dump used for about a dozen years in the 1950s and early 1960s.

So, back to the calculator, where a second effort showed a 110-by-65-yard playing surface equals 5,978 square metres.

A layer one metre high would amount to 5,978 cubic metres. And it would take 70 layers to make 400,000 cubic metres.

That’s a stack 70 metres or almost 23 storeys tall (or about 10 times higher than reported yesterday).

In the simplest terms, that’s a whole lot of garbage.

And it’s not all TV dinner trays and carpet scraps — there’s also industrial waste containing toxic PCBs and several pesticides no longer licensed for use in Canada.

That’s why it will cost an estimated $11 million to try to stop the leakage and minimize harm to the surrounding area. (Hamilton Spectator, A4, 9/20/2000)

 

Thursday November 6, 1997

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday November 6, 1997

Cleaner Lakes merit priority

There is a risk that Canada and the United States are treading water, and at risk of losing ground, in cleaning up the Great Lakes . The world’s largest freshwater ecosystem is cleaner and healthier 25 years after the signing of a landmark pollution control agreement in 1972. But much of the progress that’s been achieved could be squandered. Governments are cutting environmental budgets, weakening pollution laws and enforcement, and there’s reason to worry that politicians will become indifferent to a problem that defies easy solution. 

Marvellous Maps

The apathy that often relegates the Great Lakes to the bottom of the political totem pole is hard to understand. Some 37 million people live on either side of the Great Lakes . They draw heavily on Great Lakes water for their drinking water, recreation, fishing, manufacturing and many other uses. The stakes are extremely high. The economy and quality of life in the Great Lakes Basin hinges on the condition of this irreplaceable resource. 

There can be no complacency about past achievements — a fact that was driven home to government officials who gathered in Niagara Falls last weekend for the 25th anniversary of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Three environmental groups issued a joint report which criticized governments on both sides of the border for allowing massive amounts of toxic substances to be released into the ecosystem every day. 

The watchdogs found that while a few successes have been achieved in reducing the threat posed by DDT, PCBs and some other toxic chemicals, governments are moving too slowly in accomplishing the goal of zero discharge in the agreement. Progress has been especially slow in phasing out chemicals that result in the generation and release of dioxins and furans, which pose some of the most serious threats to life. The risks to human health remain ominous. An American scientist reported on one study showing that children of women who ate Lake Ontario fish before they were born stand a chance of having lower IQs and other learning and behavioural problems later in life. Lakewide management strategies and remedial action plans for pollution hotspots are generally proceeding at what the environmentalists describe as a glacial pace. Only one of 43 areas of concern, Collingwood Harbour, has been delisted in the past 10 years. 

To be sure, there are encouraging signs. The Double-crested Cormorant, a large fish-eating bird, has made an incredible recovery after being devastated by toxic chemicals. There are now more cormorants on the Great Lakes than at any time in recorded history. But the threats to the Lakes are daunting. Dangerous levels of pollution which harm humans, fish and wildlife should never be accepted as the price of progress and prosperity. 

Governments must show leadership by making a renewed commitment to the ingredients of past success: cleanup plans supported with the necessary funding, an insistence on strong laws with strict enforcement, and timetables to phase out the use and production of toxic chemicals that put everyone at risk. The disturbing fact is that many politicians are, of late, going in the opposite direction. They are making short-sighted decisions which will come back to haunt this generation, and the next. Political and business leaders must accept their responsibility and mobilize an effort in which we all do our fair share to protect the Great Lakes. (Source: Hamilton Spectator editorial)