News and Features
Vancouver's Trash: The Burning Question
By Frances Bula published Apr 1, 2011
Metro Vancouver produces more than a million tonnes of trash a year. Some think we can recycle almost all of it; others make a compelling case for incineration
Photo by Marina Dodis
Past the residential dumping area, along the edge of Vancouver's 425-hectare landfill in Delta, a narrow road runs past stands of trees and then what looks like a lake. To the east is a breathtaking view of the densely forested Burns Bog. It feels like a small national park. But turn around and there it is: everything we've thrown out for the last 44 years. The latest layer has been shaped into a ski hill of a slope: thousands of screaming seagulls swoop and dodge to avoid the Transformer-size bulldozers moving trash this way and that. A row of solemn eagles perch, one per pole, on the fences surrounding the top of the hill.
Everyone knows this model has to change. All that garbage, which would cover more than half of Stanley Park, arrives at a rate of 500,000 tonnes a year, and that's only about 40 percent of what's generated in the region. Nearly the same amount is trucked to Cache Creek.
What to do? Two visions compete for favour, visions that divide politicians and have put environmentalists at odds with each other, visions based on radically different ideas about what technology and humans are capable of. In one, we burn garbage into nothingness, a tonne of garbage reduced to a few pounds of ash, along the way producing energy to warm greenhouses or run the transportation system.
In the other, garbage also turns into nothingness, because we take every bit of it-the batteries, the chicken bones, the discarded couches, the construction debris-and separate it all out, put it in the right boxes, and ship it off to have it turned back into something useful.
Sometime in the next year, the region will have to decide. Metro planners are solidly in favour of incineration in the region, in something with substantially more capacity than the Burnaby incinerator, which handled 300,000 tonnes last year. But last July, its collective of politicians from 21 municipalities hedged their bets, asking that planners explore several options: incinerators in the region, incinerators out of the region, publicly run incinerators, privately run incinerators, drastic reductions of garbage through recycling, alternatives to all of the above. That multipronged proposal sits with the provincial government, awaiting approval. If the next environment minister rules that Victoria will allow a new incinerator, the door will be open for an all-out tussle. On one side: environmentalists, politicians, and businesses hoping to develop new waste-to-energy plants; on the other: environmentalists, politicians, and citizens who want to save us from ourselves.
