With the New Year, journalists traditionally focus (naturally) on reviewing the past year and looking forward to the year ahead. I don't want to review the past year or make predictions -- at least not today. What I'd like to share is an observation based on two documentaries that I encountered recently that, taken together, got me thinking about the big picture. And I do mean, The Big Picture.

The first was a CNN business segment about "peak oil." I've heard peak oil discussions in the past and heard the arguments on both sides. This one made a strong impression on me because it featured an interview with a gentleman with more than 30 years experience in the oil exploration and drilling business. He was worldly, experienced, a bit jaded and anything but an "environmentalist." His take on things was that in the past century, since the mass introduction of the motor car, we've passed the half-way mark in using up the planet's oil and gas. The interviewer threw every argument available against the notion that we will eventually "run out." But his answers were cogent and convincing. This guy has been in oil exploration his whole life and knows everyone in the business. The consensus among most professionals is that we'll find more oil fields here and there, but nothing major, nothing along the lines of a new Saudi Arabia. I forget the number he trotted out, but he gave an approximate number for all the oil and gas that exists or could exist in the world, and stated that we are past half way.

With India and China emerging as major industrial and consumer nations, we'll run through the other half more quickly than the first half, he said. Even if new technologies allow for full exploitation of the tar sands and fossil fuel sources that are not commercially viable right now, that will add only a few years to the availability of fossil fuels. Even if the TV program was wildly wrong and we have, say, two centuries of these materials in the ground, the point is that (a) only a limited amount can be supplied each day (X billion barrels -- use whatever number you like) and (b) one day the tap will run dry (again, pick your own date). Long before that day arrives, demand will vastly outpace supply, and prices will soar. The inescapable conclusion is that our modern way of life will become unaffordable and will alter drastically. Not only are the non-renewable oils and gases fundamental to transportation and other energy uses -- they're the bedrock of the petrochemical industry that is key to such things as plastics and pharmaceutical products.

My conclusion from this program is that, while we may argue about the date, industrial society as it's currently arranged is living on borrowed time. You don't have to be a Deep Green environmentalist to think this; from a business-oriented perspective there's a waterfall at the end of these rapids, and the edge is coming into view. Some environmentalists would have us give up our modern consumerist ways. Technocrats believe new technologies will overcome these challenges. I fall somewhere in between. Barring some tremendous leap forward, like cold fusion, I think the current paradigm is going to change dramatically about two generations from now. We need to become a conserver society not so much to preserve our current "wicked ways" in terms of home heating and air conditioning and driving in cars, but to preserve valuable resources for foreseeable and unforseen future uses. It took billions of years for those oil reserves to form from plant decomposition and pressure/heat from the earth -- it's terrible to run through it all in just a few generations in trips back and forth from the shopping mall. How our great grandshildren will despise us when they look back!

The other item was a TV documentary on CBC's excellent The Passionate Eye series. You'll see the connection with the first item in a minute, but the gist of this program was that it marked the one-year annivesary of the Asian tsunami that killed 250,000 last year. The show featured amazing amatuer videotape of the ocean receding into a highly unnatural low tide, then a tidal wave sweeping in and killing people. It was shocking footage with people being swept inland or out to sea. Then the second wave hit. Afterwards, there were bodies piled everywhere; vibrant men and women and old people and children turned in minutes by nature's fury into drowned corpses.

The thing that made the deepest impression on me was the western tourists and the westernized hotel staff at one resort in Indonesia standing on the beach, looking out to sea at the strange low tide, oblivious as to what was happening. You hear them commenting, "What's going on out there?" as they catch site of a foaming white band out near the horizon. They talk about it at some length, as the tidal wave is far out at sea. You want to yell out to them, "Get the hell out of there!" but they continue standing with their hands on their hips watching the unreal spectacle of all this white froth out in the ocean, slowly moving toward them. Their kids play in the sand, and many people continue to sunbathe, reading books on deck chairs, listening to tunes on their iPods. Of course, within a couple of minutes they're all dead. The video records their screams and cries for help.

The filmmakers heard about an island archipelago whose inhabitants are among the most "primitive" in the world. They have limited contact with the outside world, and continue to live in their age-old indigenous ways. Interestingly, none of these people drowned from the tsunami, even though their islands lay directly in its path. The filmmakers interviewed one of the islanders, who explained (along with some mythological allegory) that their tribal wisdom tells them that the land and sea are always negotiating and renegotiating where their boundary shall be. When they saw the low tide occur at a time when it's not supposed to, they knew that the waters receding would come back, and in a big way. They grabbed their belongings and headed for higher land and safety.

The whole thing illustrated the irony of the modern situation. Here we have modern educated, technologically astute humans, disconnected from nature, being killed by tidal waves, not recognizing the danger even though they're seeing it with their own eyes from afar. And we have aboriginal people, connected to nature and its cycles and rhythms, surviving and thriving, because they're connected to nature-based traditions that are thousands of years old.

Experiencing the radio and TV programs within a few days of one another had a powerful effect on me. I was left to ponder a sort of matrix of ideas in which the contemporary oil-based industrial society around me -- that is disconnected from nature and sees it only as a source of materials for rampant exploitation -- is living on borrowed time, and the indigenous people of the world, so forsaken and even outrighly abused, still maintain a way of life connected to the earth, the sky and the sea in cultures that have been around for thousands, even tens of thousands, of years.

These two groups of people, the moderns and the aboriginal, have endured an uncomfortable coexistence for many years. The latter have experienced wholesale genocide in many instances. Modern man, machine man, has committed many atrocities against his own kind, as well. Think of the Holocaust. Think of Hiroshima. The optimistic side of me wonders whether a new age will dawn in which these two types of humans will come together. Technological man will adopt a simpler way of life, more like that of indigenous people; aboriginals will in turn adopt some of modern man's innovations. Perhaps one day most of the population will migrate, of necessity, to more temperate lands where indoor climate control is not required. The cold north and south and the hot tropics will be for outliers, for specialists. We'll live in a tribal manner, eschewing cars, but will be connected via wireless internet devices to a global culture of world music, literature and art.

Is this already happening? I believe this mayu be the case. It's still early days, but perhpas not so early as we think. Anyway, those are my thoughts are we ring the New Year in.

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A news item that I put up today ("Kootenay pushes full EPR for 'product waste'") points up something that's been on my mind as my wife and I buy and wrap presents in preparation for Christmas. (For your convenience, I've pasted the article at the end of this blog item.)

I imagine that even people not in the waste and recycling/composting business have the same thoughts as they wrap and unwrap presents on the Big Day: What a nuisance all that packaging is, and what an environmental burden. Of course, the packaging of toys and various doo-dads shared at Christmas are not dissimilar to the consumer items we purchase and discard throughout the rest of the year -- there's just an intensity around Xmas that really brings home the message that we sure do consume and waste a lot.

My guess is that in addition to each family's regular Christmas traditions, there is also a "garbage tradition" beyond the trip (for some) to church, and the usual tree, turkey, egg nog and so on.

In our house, the "garbage tradition" includes getting out a big green garbage bag that we place in the middle of the consumer orgy room, er, I mean, living room. As the presents are opened, any waste packaging is shoved in there. By the time the consumer orgy is over, the towering dark bag is like a hideous green twin to the Christmas tree (which in our case is also made of green plastic). In the old days, before I became enlightened, the garbage bag would be put out with the trash. Now, of course, its contents get sorted into the recycling bins, and only a minimal amount is sent to the landfill. Another new part of our Christmas "garbage tradition" is that we now put most of our gifts in colorful gift bags, the contents disguised with a little crepe paper inside. The bags can be reused over and over, which is very politically correct, and I wish I could say we did it because we're environmentalists. Truth is, we do it because we're cheap! This is the same reason we now send email Christmas cards instead of paper ones to friends and relatives. Actually, that's not because we're cheap, but because we're lazy.

Before I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (and a Happy Hannukah and Kwanza and everything else folks celebrate) I'd like to offer my my all-time most hated forms of wasteful, irritating packaging. In David Letterman style, the list goes from least to worst offenders:

10) Packaging inside other packaging. The cardboard box that encloses the plastic toothpaste tube is a good example. There are hundreds of others

9) The little easy-to-lose-in-the-(wind/car/grass) plastic sleeves around the straws on the outside of Tetra-Pak juice boxes. There must be billions of these floating around in the environment by now, making their way from children's hands through minivan doors and windows to the bottom of far-flung oceans and (by now) the Arctic (along with our toxic and greenhouse gases).

8) "Squeezable" plastic containers for condiments like mustard and ketchup. In fact, "squeezable" anything!

7) Styrofoam or polystyrene used to protect inexpensive items. (Okay, I understand it for thousand-dollar TVs, but there's still way too much of this stuff in use.)

6) Non-resealable packaging for items that you'd like to store in an open-and-close container (e.g., finishing nails). Typically these have a plastic front and a cardboard back, and hang neatly on store displays. I'm willing to pay MORE for the same items in resealable, reusuable packages. (You hear that, hardware manufacturers?)

5) The boxes that contain computer software and video games. (I mean, seriously, you open them up, and they contain a CD or DVDas thick as a credit card -- the larger box is entirely for advertising display.)

4) The shrink-wrap around CDs, DVDs, cassette tapes, etc. You know -- the stuff you try to open with your finger nail or tooth, and ALWAYS have to eventually open with a pair of scissors (which are never easy to locate). "Where are the good scissors?!" is a more common holiday refrain than Jingle Bells.

3) Packaging around Barbie dolls and other figurines that, if opened, destroys the resale of value of the item for collectors. How stupid is that? How many dolls addicts have little mortuaries of dolls stacked shoulder height in their basements, their contents forever peering out through their plastic windows, unloved, like Snow White in her glass coffin, except in this version when the handsome prince comes, instead of kssing her he sells her on eBay.

2) Aluminum cans: This probably should be number one. This metal is smelted in highly energy-consuming plants, after being strip mined and processed from bauxite. Okay, let's use it to make light-yet-rigid airplanes that fly for 25 years (and then get recycled) -- but it's a crime against the world to use it to make soda or beer cans for one-time use. (Yes, they are recyclable, but after all these years of proselytizing, half -- HALF! -- still end up in the landfill.) If I was garbage czar, I would order all soft drinks to be sold in refillable PET containers like they do in Germany. Having written this means I now have to check under the hood of my car before I start it up, for the rest of my life. But someone has to say it.

And the Number One most offensive packaging is (drum roll)...

1) Action figures, motor cars and other toys sold in cardboard boxes, with clear plastic windows, buffered with styrofoam, and held in place to the rigid backing with about a dozen annoying wire-and-plastic twist ties that take about ten minutes to deconstruct while your five-year-old cries and grabs impatiently, before you then have to hunt for the tiny eye-glasses Philips-head screwdriver to open the compartment to insert the batteries, which by now you realize were embedded in a niche in the styrofoam that is now at the bottom of the garbage bag, and...ARGH...you know the rest of the story (and will relive it again in a couple of days...)

Happy holidays everyone!

Kootenay pushes full EPR for "product waste"

The response to the first unilateral action by a local government in North America to "return all responsibility for the management of product waste" to senior levels of government was applauded by the Athens, Georgia-based Product Policy Institute.

"Product waste" is all the manufactured goods and packaging or "made stuff" discarded in our society which local governments are typically responsible for managing or regulating. Product waste is contrasted with "organic waste" or "grown stuff" such as food and yard trimmings.

The local body, Kootenay Boundary Regional District (KBRD) in British Columbia, Canada, wrote provincial Environment Minister, Barry Penner in August. In the letter, KBRD Board Chair, Rick Hardie, acknowledged British Columbia's leadership in the use of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policies, but said that KBRD's goal of achieving "Zero Waste" would be difficult if not impossible to reach unless EPR is extended to a broader range of products.

"The underlying problem," Hardie said, is "that Regional Districts have been given responsibility for managing the discards of our consumer society without being given adequate authority to do so in a way that doesn't impact the local taxpayer."

At their Thursday meeting the KBRD Board heard the Minister's response: "I agree that product waste is an appropriate definition for the ultimate scope of EPR programs which would leave local governments with the responsibility to manage only materials such as: garden or food waste for composting; organic based waste; and demolition, land clearing and construction refuse," Minister Penner wrote.

"The Board is very pleased with the Minister's commitment to expand EPR programs in British Columbia to encompass all product waste," said Raymond Gaudart, Resource Recovery coordinator for KBRD. "Over time this commitment will relieve taxpayers of the ever increasing cost of managing consumer discards and will provide an incentive to manufacturers to design their products with recycling in mind. Kootenay Boundary will continue to press the province for timely expansion of EPR programs."

"This is the start of a new trend we will see much more of," said Vancouver-based Helen Spiegelman, president of PPI. "Municipal recycling and landfilling of products is not only costly to taxpayers; it is welfare for the producers of wasteful products and actually encourages production of more waste."

Both letters are posted at www.productpolicy.org/resources

About The Product Policy Institute (PPI)

The Product Policy Institute (PPI) is a nonpartisan research and education nonprofit organization promoting policies that advance sustainable production, consumption and waste management in North America. PPI is working with local governments to develop policies and programs that conserve resources and reduce local taxes by transferring responsibility for product waste management back to the makers of products and their customers. Website : www.productpolicy.org

Contact Info:

Helen Spiegelman
President Product Policy Institute
604-731-8464
hspie@telus.net

Raymond Gaudart
Kootenay Boundary Regional District
250-368-0232
zerowaste@rdkb.com

Product Policy Institute
P.O. Box 48433
Athens, GA 30604-8433
USA

Tel: 706-613-0710
Email: info@ProductPolicy.org
Web: www.ProductPolicy.org

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In the forthcoming December/January edition of Solid Waste & Recycling magazine I've written an article based on my recent plant tour of the Noranda Recycling e-waste recycling plant in Brampton, Ontario. I was very impressed with the plant, overall, and wanted to share with readers an item (below) that my tour guide Cindy Thomas handed to me, which is a ten-point check list anyone should use in auditing a potential service provider for e-waste recycling.

To my mind, this is critical information. As a former editor of HazMat Management magazine, I'm very familiar with the importance to companies of auditing facilities that handle their wastes, and I suggest you copy and paste the information below and use it as a reference. Share it with anyone in your company involved in this kind of decision making. I've toured a number of e-waste plants and found them superficially acceptable, but then I've been disturbed later by little details. For example, in one plant I took some photos, and then couldn't use the most interesting pictures because droplets or deposits of some kind formed on my camera lens. This was invisible to me at the time, but it was interesting to me that the photos were fine up to the point in my tour when I was in the area of the shredding equipment. Clearly, the shredder was releasing some sort of fine dust into the air. In retrospect I'm concerned about the health and safety of the folks working in that area; it bothers me to think I was breathing that junk even for a short time. It's likely made up of very fine particles of plastic and metal. Yikes!

With e-waste programs coming onstream across Canada, the importance will grow of plants operating to the same standard as Noranda Recycling. I hate to tout the virtues of any one company and I don't mean to endorse Noranda and not someone else. But do yourself a favor: tour the Noranda plant, and bring the check list below on any other tours you take. Don't settle for less. Another thing that impressed me about the Noranda plant was that they videotape operations and the destruction of equipment, to prove destruction and data security. I have a feeling that some of the companies taking e-waste these days need to make an investment in these areas, and I think regulators should insist on these as minimal standards, to establish a level playing field, and not one in which the low-cost operator wins contracts, while running a "dirty" business. Just my two cents.

Here's the list.

Ten key questions to ask your end of life electronics recycler

1. Does your recycler provide evidence of its permitting, including air emission and waste permits, hazardous waste generation registration and regulatory compliance for the past five years?

2. Does your recycler provide evidence that 100 per cent of your material is not being landfilled or sent outside Canada or the U.S.?

3. Does your recycler provide downstream accountability (audit record and copies of permits/insurance) for the ultimate destination of 100 per cent of your hardware? For example, if your recycler sends a part of your hardware to another company, your recycler must provide evidence that this recycler is operating in and environmentally sound manner, not passing the waste on to another organization that might be landfilling or exporting to a lesser developed country.

4. Does your recycler provide copies of their environment, health and safety policies and practices, including their emergency response plans, closure plans, employee training plans, record keeping, fire prevention and security plans?

5. Does your recycler provide proof of insurance?

6. Does your recycler provide evidence that they do not use prison labor?

7. Does your recycler provide you with a certificate of recycling and destruction?

8. Does your recycler provide evidence of an environmental management system, such as ISO 14000?

9. Does your recycler provide evidence of suitable management systems in place to ensure that
applicable employee health and safety laws, regulations and standards are enforced?

10. Do YOU audit your recycler to verify that the above is in place and part of daily operations?

For more information contact Cindy Thomas at 905-874-6835.

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s not always the case that messy public spats get resolved into neat little packages, tied up with a bow. So it’s a pleasure to be able to write that this magazine’s recent argument with the Alberta Recycling Management Authority (ARMA) over recycling fees has attained some sort of closure. Before I describe our findings from ARMA’s recent annual reports -- which substantiate our earlier claims and analysis -- a little context is required.

In an article in our June/July edition, legal columnist Adam Chamberlain raised questions about the constitutionality of fees imposed by stewardship organizations to fund their operations and the recycling of such things as e-waste. He used ARMA to illustrate his point, suggesting that new fees pertaining to such things as old TV monitors were devised around the time the organization’s e-waste program was experiencing a cash crunch.

This triggered a letter from ARMA that said the insinuation was unsubstantiated. We printed the letter in the August/September edition, along with a long editor’s reply from me in which, after some sleuthing, I presented evidence from ARMA publications that the organization’s e-waste program must have had cashflow problems in early 2004 (when it was processing e-waste but had not yet received advance disposal fees). It’s a bit of a “no no” in stewardship schemes to use levies collected for the recycling of one material to fund the recycling of another. This is something ARMA stated on its own website it would not do.

After presenting my evidence, I offered ARMA a full page in our magazine in the Up Front section to provide an accounting to readers. ARMA declined this offer, which is a pity since subsequent events showed the organization could have cleared things up and ended what I’ll call a “communications wrangle” simply by pointing to the fine print of its own recent annual reports.

Anyway, the Recycling Council of Alberta and The Composting Council of Canada held a joint conference at Chateau Lake Louise (October 12-14) and I attended in order to (a) pose my questions directly to the ARMA folks who I new would be in attendance and (b) remind them that I don’t have horns.

The missing number

At a product stewardship session I asked ARMA lawyer Rob Seidel whether monies collected under ARMA’s tire stewardship program were used to help the e-waste program when it was in start-up mode. Seidel answered my rather blunt question by saying that ARMA’s annual reports contain an entry that shows such a transaction. He subsequently mailed me ARMA’s annual reports from the past two years and, over the phone, guided me to the precise number, which is $344,484. It first appears near the back of the 2003-2004 report in the auditor’s statement as “Deferred charges.” The number falls off the books in the 2004-2005 annual report after being repaid to the tire program. The e-waste program took on bank indebtedness of $1.952 million, and this was subsequently paid off from e-waste levies.

Effectively, revelation of the $344,484 number puts an end to the matter, and it’s all water under the bridge now.
But I’d like to note that in case some observers think I relish “gotcha” moments in public meetings, they’d be surprised to learn how much I hate that kind of thing. My vision is that we should be able to debate our professional issues tenaciously, and still go out for a beer afterwards (which is exactly what happened at the conference). Not to be preachy, but I think ARMA learned something from this about the risk of burying certain data in the fine print of annual reports and not mentioning it to journalists who ask pointed questions, just as I learned a thing or two about the importance of maintaining a collegial tone when debating policy matters with people with whom one is going to interact for a long time to come.

Now it’s onward and upward, which I imagine is good news for certain readers who may regard all this as a tempest in a teapot. In the forthcoming December/January edition of our magazine, I'm running a long-ish letter from a landfill operator who's sick of the whole issue. (See the letter and my reply on pages 58-59.) Also, I'll get our IT department to some recent ARMA documents relating to vendor qualification and other matters at this website. (Look under the "Posted Documents" button.)

Postscript: Actually, I do have horns. If you don't always see them, it's because they're retractable.

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today I'm having lunch with Wes Muir, director of communications for Waste Management, and our publisher, Brad O'Brien. This will be an excellent opportunity to learn more about recent changes at the world's largest waste services company, which recently underwent an internal realignment, and which also has some interesting projects on the go. One such project is an enormous single-stream recycling plant in Peel Region that will open in early 2006 which we plan to profile in our February/March edition.

I'm also heading over to our corporate office in Toronto to review the final proofs of our December/January edition before they go to press. We have an excellent article lineup and I offer you a preview below by way of reproducing our Table of Contents for that edition. Please note that the December/January edition features our 2006 Annual Buyer's Guide -- a handy edition to keep on your office shelf throughout the year as a reference for all your waste industry product and service needs. At the bottom of the Contents page, you'll see a glimpse of what's coming in the February/March edition.

Here's the article line-up from the December/January edition, from our upcoming Contents page:

COVER STORY
Calgary’s Curbside Decision
After the City of Calgary council endorsed a new goal of 80 per cent waste diversion by 2020, triple-bottom-line analysis tipped the scales in favour of curbside collection of recyclables and organics.
By Guy Crittenden...8

DIVERSION: MARKHAM’S “MISSION GREEN”
How this Ontario city pulled ahead with over 60 per cent diversion.
By Ben Bennett...18

PRODUCT STEWARDSHIP: E-WASTE EXCELLENCE.
A tour of Noranda Recycling Inc.’s plant in Brampton, Ontario.
By Guy Crittenden...20

LANDFILL TECHNOLOGY: ENERGY FROM GAS
EPCOR Distribution’s facility at Edmonton’s Clover Bar Landfill...49

DEPARTMENTS
Editorial 4
Up Front 6
Composting Matters 22
Events 42
Regulation Roundup 44
Commodities Corner 46
Waste Business 47
News 50
Ad Index 52
Internet Directory 60
Final Analysis 62

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT: THE 2006 BUYERS’ GUIDE pages 25-40

NEXT EDITION
Supplement: Ontario IC&I waste services special insert
Supplement: Hauling/Transportation and Materials Handling Equipment
Results of our annual online industry survey. Single-stream MRF. Large organics plant. Restaurant waste program. C&D waste. Shredder technology.
Advertisers, contact Publisher Brad O’Brien at 1-888-702-1111 ext. 2

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 4:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The newspaper article "Landfill saves jobs at Cascades" from La Presse (December 9, 2005) is of interest to waste management professionals and policymakers. (I have reproduced it in full below.)

The article shows that a fine-paper plant in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec would have been completely shuttered, but for the fact that inexpensive landfill gas from a special project has kept the plant (or at least most of it) competitive in today's tough paper market.

In addition to illustrating an environmental win (utilization of potent methane gas that would otherwise have just been flared or released to the environment), the story points up another concept that I wish were banted about more often at waste industry conferences and professional gatherings: industrial ecology.

Although the term "industrial ecology" has many components, at its core it's about one industry's waste becoming the feedstock for another industry's operations. Often it refers to the use of waste energy. A good example is steam from a boiler or incinerator used to drive turbines to produce electricity, or to otherwise power a nearby plant.

In today's climate of rising energy prices, landfill gas and other energy outputs from waste management is becoming a cricual factor. In fact, I participated in a recent FCM workshop put on by MWIN in which the people at my table conducted an exercise with surprising results. We were tasked with designing a waste management system to achieve a certain level of diversion for a municipality of a certain size. In the end, we concluded that rather than collect source-separated organics for composting, it made more sense in this example (since we had no shortage of landfill space) to develop the landfill as a "bioreactor" and make use of the methane for commercial purposes.

The Cascades story is more or less a real-world example of such a strategy in action. I expect to see more stories like this in future as municipalities and different industries work together to boost efficiency of what is often a wasteful and inefficient system, in terms of power use and generation and garbage disposal.

From La Presse, December 9, 2005, Montreal, Quebec

Landfill saves jobs at Cascades

After losing a lot of money, Cascades has finally decided the fate of its fine-paper plant in Saint-Jérôme. One of its four machines will be put out of production and 100 jobs will disappear, but the plant itself will survive.

The 315 employees that are staying can be thankful for the landfill gas now used to power the venerable plant built in 1892. “It’s the reason why we can still see a future for the plant,” explained Mario Plourde, President and CEO of Cascades’ Fine Papers Group.

The landfill gas produced at the Saint-Sophie landfill site supplies nearly three-quarters of the Saint-Jérôme plant’s energy needs at a very low cost. According to Mario Plourde, the plant could not have survived if it had to pay the current market prices for natural gas.

In order to power its plant with the methane produced by the decomposing garbage -- a first in Québec -- Cascades signed an agreement last year with Gaz Métro and Intersan, the owner of the Sainte-Sophie landfill site. This 10-year agreement included extending the Gaz Métro pipeline from the landfill site to the plant, a distance of 13 kilometres.

The project entailed investments reaching $10 million and Cascades began to receive the landfill gas at the end of 2004.

Half of the 100 jobs that will be eliminated after Christmas are production jobs, and the other half will be in management, maintenance and technical services. The machine to be mothballed was capable of producing 8,000 tonnes annually.

Its production will be transferred to the three remaining machines, and the plant’s production will stay the same, around 140,000 tonnes annually.

Mario Plourde clarified that the plant will also drop some types of paper production and specialize in the more profitable products. These include papers with 100% recycled post-consumer content, security papers (for passports and so forth), and opaque paper. The Saint-Jérôme plant was owned by Papiers Rolland before it was purchased by Cascades in 1992.

Cascades closed its other fine-paper plant in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and sold its paper merchants division to the Australian group, PaperlinX. Its fine-paper production will be concentrated at Saint-Jérôme.

While the lay-offs will cost Cascades $9 million, mostly for severance payments, this decision will enable the company to save $15 million annually. Fine Papers Group anticipates becoming profitable again in 2006.

Mario Plourde admits that the company, founded by the Lemaire brothers, is a small player in the fine-paper market, but it is feeling the competition less than Domtar because of its very specialized production. “We may be small, but we aren’t typical,” he said.

The soft markets and the rising value of the Canadian dollar has nonetheless pushed Cascades bottom line downward. After the first nine months of its current financial exercise, it has shown profits of $7 million (9 cents on the share), compared with $18 million (22 cents on the share) for the same period last year.

Yesterday, Cascades finished the day on the TSE at $9.40, unchanged from the previous day. Over the last year, share prices have fluctuated between $7.35 and $13.95.

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I was out in the morning attending a stakeholders/sponsors meeting with the folks from Messe Frankfurt concerning next year's Canadian Waste & Recycling Expo. MWIN, OWMA, SWANA and the CCC were represented, and other organizations will be invited to participate in next year's event, which will be held in Toronto. There was discussion about dates and venue, and we reviewed the results of an exhibitor survey. Watch this space for an update soon on final dates and location.

Attending that meeting prevented me from going to a stakeholder meeting where blue box funding was discussed. This was a consultation held by Stewardship Ontario at the Novotel Hotel in Toronto, which the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) encouraged its members to attend. It's all toward a review of stewards' fees and how the blue box is funded in 2007 when the current fomula expires.

I invite anyone who attended that meeting to reply to this blog post with a comment and tell us all what went down.

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I attended a one-day workshop presented by the Association of Municipal Recycling Coordinators (AMRC) entitled "Organics and 2008 – moving towards 60% diversion" at the Richmond Hill Country Club, December 6, 2005. The event was co-hosted with The Composting Council of Canada (CCC).

I took lots of notes on my laptop computer, and cut and pasted them below for anyone who cares to browse. Please note that these are just my point-form notes and more detail will be available from the workshop proceedings when posted at the AMRC website (see below).

You can read the notes for yourself, but there are a couple of "big picture" observations and comments I'd like to share quickly.

First, a representative from the Ministry of Environment was invited but no one came. The event organizers were very polite about this, but I don't have to be. It's totally unacceptable that the environment ministry didn't send someone to talk to this excellent professional audience, especially since the ministry is pushing for 60% waste diversion, and claims to believe that organics diversion is a big part of that. Several peopl commented that this is yet another sign that the ministry is completely "disengaged." I would go so far as to say the ministry is arrogant and just not doing its job. The environment minister is concerned these days about sticking to her script and setting the agenda with drinking water, and is just not dealing with the waste file. Politicians seem to forget they were elected to serve the public, and not even being bothered to send a mid-level (or even junior) staff person to this event is reprehensible, and part of a very clear pattern. One highly regarded consultant muttered that if this is their attitude, we should all just stay home. I share his disgust, and I intend to keep bringing this topic up again and again until the minstry does something about it.

The other big "take away" for me from the event involved the issue of plastic bags. The discussion about biodegradable bags was very interesting, and one or two people pointed out that they serve no purpose if some people use them and others use regular bags within a given program. Yet Jim Graham of London-based Try Recycling said that plastic bags were no big deal for his company and by using screens and some elbow grease, they were able to remove the bags and generate clean compost. Hamilton's Pat Parker had a very different perspective, and stated that the new Hamilton organics plant is not being built to handle bags, and that in pilots they've discovered people won't use bags at all if you communicate clearly and educate the public carefully.

So it was interesting to see totally different attitudes toward plastic bags for organics. Apparently they're not a problem when allowed in a program, and they're not a problem when forbidden. I'd want to talk to these people in depth before going one way or the other if I was designing a program, but it was overall good news for anyone wondering if plastics prevent the generation of clean compost. (This whole discussion reminded me about glass apparently not being a big problem in single stream systems -- for some people -- in the last AMRC workshop.)

The other big "take away" for me was the importance of Ontario adopting some version of the new CCME standard for compost. This was another reason someone from the ministry should have been there. (Are you listening, Minister Broten? I won't natter on about the new standard, since our Composting Matters columnist Paul van der Werf and consultant Michael Cant have written an excellent article about the new CCME compost standard for the December/January edition of our magazine, due out near the end of this month.

A very big news item came out from this workshop, and that is that Recyc-Quebec is going to develop a certification for biodegradable bags. Apparently a news release is due within days, and I'll be sure to post it on Headline News on this website as soon as I get it. susan Antler (see below) said Recyc-Quebec is going to is investing $39,000 on a certification program for biodegradable bags. BNQ will undertake a review through the Standards Council of Canada. It's a six-month review process and will make use of the ASTM and two other standards so as to not reinvent what has been established elsewhere. There will be committee meetings, public meetings, public input, and SCC will give a number and its endorsement. The process will be complete in 2006 and companies will pay to be certified and will receive a BPI-style stamp.

Hats off to the AMRC and the CCC, by the way, for yet another excellent workshop. Last month the AMRC put on a workshop on single stream recycling that was equally informative and interesting. (You can download the proceedings at the AMRC website.) I'd like to add that the venue of the Richmond Hill Country Club was superb. The CCC and the Recycling Council of Alberta (RCA) put on a wonderful conference in Lake Louise in October, too, so we'd like to see more joint ventures between the CCC and various recycling organizations in future.

This reminds me that everyone should mark their calendars re. the AMRC Spring Workshop and Annual General Meeting (February 15 - 17, 2006) in Hockley Valley. Call (519) 823-1990 for details. I plan to attend, and I'll be bringing my snowboard this time -- now that I live in Collingwood this is de rigeur.

Guy Crittenden's conference notes from the AMRC Organics workshop, Dec. 6, 2005

(The proceedings from the workshop will be posted at the AMRC site at www.amrc.ca These notes are a sketch only of presentations made during the day, and any errors are those of this author.)

Welcome from Mayor Bell

1. Susan Antler (CCC)
• Spoke about how she has attempted to get environment ministry funding to develop infrastructure
• Clear and consistent standards needed
• Ensure level playing field between agricultural and residential sector
• Fully adopt CCME
• Utility model similar to wastewater, long-term planning
• Training and certification for program operators
• Unclear whether Ontario will adopt CCME criteria
• Need to “pull product” through the system. Province and municipalities could lead by example
• Education and promotion key
• Inportance of Compost Quality Alliance
• Current status: “Time for being polite is over”; CCME guidelines; training (quality needs to cascade throughout the whole industry); real life CQA specifications for different categories beyond generic term “compost” (opportunity for green roof market, erosion control, need quality specifications); Need to coordinate letter writing campaign to minister. ON meetings effective w/o January 2nd; Association partnerships.
• April there will be 1,000 days left before 2008 – special event planned at parliament buildings.

2. Mike Birett (York Region)
• GTA contract management
• York Region efforts to divert organics, RFP format, what’s worked and what hasn’t
• Seven years looking at SSO. Initially only attracted one (high) bid.
• 2002 contracted out to Newmarket plant when managed by Canada Composting, closed before contract started.
• Ontario needs 320,000 SSO tonnage processing capacity
• 15 sites exist that handle >20,000 tonnes. Shortfall across Ontario is about 200,000 tonnes of processing capacity.
• Shipped to Halton Recycling, now goes to Quebec. Not enough infrastructure in Ontario.
• Starting to get more players bidding on contracts.
• Two-part proposal: technical proposal; sealed price proposal. This helps screen out low-ball approach.
• Bid requires that within past 12 months processing 25% of contract tonnage.
• Processing must be for unrestricted use.
• Factors: product marketing; emissions and treatment; management experience and capability; overall technical feasibility; track record; references and site visits
• Have bidders “price out their exceptions” rather than price out technical points yourself.
• $50K bid bond as a screening tool.
• Performance bond as stability test (50% of total annual value of services).
• Clear and concise: accurate and thorough definitions.
• Know the market in advance: can they handle SSO in plastic; is there value in a joint partnership (capitalize construction).
• Certainty: put or pay for limited tonnage; allowable level of contamination; daily/weekly delivery guarantees (esp. for AD).
• Fuel surcharge.
• Performance based guarantees. Availability guarantee, etc.
• Financial guarantees, contingency plans
• Short term contracts work best in uncertain markets (opinion)
• Contract stems from RFP
• Thanks to Brian Van Opstal at Toronto for development of RFP template.

3. Jim Graham, Try Recycling
• Private sector perspective on tenders and contracts.
• Try Recycling started in 1991 in London, with C&D waste
• Determined end-use products before took first materials. Three products are made from drywall.
• Now does compost and C&D. Moved beyond static pile to generate a better end product; now 20-30K tonnes of yard and leaf waste. Has learned to deal with plastic bags. They pre-sell material before the supply comes in the door – emphasis on market development.
• Ratepayers now interested in value and fate of material that they’re sorting.
• Perceptions are maturing. Tenders can capture the original intent of the legislation.
• Contract specifications can create level playing facilities.
• Multi-year contracts with weight put on qualitative components.
• Bonding not the entire solution, esp. when the company doesn’t have a construction component to their business. Bonds designed for engineering type projects with final date.
• Environmental staff must educate municipal planning groups about successes.
• Contract and tender should consider CCME guidelines. Look at ability of contractor to process the feedstock. Track record and experience of the team.
• No black box solutions.
• CQA certification (was developed by the contractors with the CCC), marketing program, community involvement/participation programs.
• Try Recycling donates a large amount of material to charities to sell back to the community. With the public involved, feedstock becomes cleaner as awareness grows.

4. Susan Antler (CCC)
• Lessons learned
• Leave some room in your budget for contingencies
• Research markets in advance (start with the end in mind)
• Learn about your product: many people come from the waste management business, but we need to understand the growing process which organics ultimately supports (e.g., pumpkin growing competition).
• SSO: When food residuals arrive, process them immediately.
• Buy technology that is proven; respect the science; invest in knowledge and experience
• Composting smells: you have to anticipate this in your plans.
• Upfront training and ongoing training.
• Design facility to produce high quality compost, which means knowing what the incoming feedstock is and what it will do to your process.
• Diligent product testing is the norm now. Incorporate regulatory requirements as well as end-user needs.
• Celebrate successes
• Discuss needs, esp. customers
• Work on consequences (e.g., what happens when loads come in that are not to spec)
• Worker health and safety: dust suppression, ventilation; emergency procedures.
• Odor control strategy should include keeping neighbors
• Selling a bagged compost requires special skills; bulk is much easier to do economically
• Q & A: Plastics removed by Try Recycling with screens and manual pulling.

5. Denis Potvin (Conporec)
• Spoke on criteria for choosing a compost system.
• Many variables – no single solution that will work everywhere
• People often talk about the technology at the heart of the system whereas the total system includes many factors beyond that.
• Look at variables, feedstock, contamination: observation that you need FLEXIBILITY.
• No one size fits all solution
• The heart of the Conporec system us a windrow aerated system with turners. But also has drum that first sorts/composts in advance (after just three days of composting).
• They know the composition of organics, fibre, contamination up front.
• SSO and MSW hard to distinguish at times. Leaf and yard under 5% contamination.
• Technology can handle he contamination, but there’s the issue of costs. You can plot a grid with contamination and level of technology and cost.
• The better the quality going in, the better the end product and the easier processing (obviously).

6. Josef Barth (European Composting Network)
• The need for a lot of experience and exchange of information required the establishment of the ECN.
• AD accepted as parallel technology for organics.
• Landfill ban driving the issue. EU directive will reduce emissions from landfill.
• “Biocomposting” is their term for SSO but may also include garden and yard waste in some countries.
• Green composting = yard waste
• Quality assurance well developed in Europe
• Reviewed status of composting in different countries.
• Legal drivers include landfill directive, EU soil protection strategy, nutrients in soil strategies, climate change concerns.
• Reduce landfill material by 65% by 2016.
• EU soil strategy includes use of compost because many soils lack sufficient biological activity. Concern about metals, but with proper standards supplies fertility to soil.
• 1,800 plants in Europe, 40% green waste only
• 18 million tonnes processing capacity.
• Quality labels apply to 620 plants and 9 million tonnes of capacity.
• Ag is 30% of final market; Household gardens are 20%.
• Very little marketing for high volume Ag markets; lots of marketing for specialized products.

7. Michael Cant (Totten Sims Hubicki TSH Associates)
• Biosolids and septage
• Sue Saint Marie: wanted to combine biosolids and leaf and yard waste, studied this but couldn’t meet the restrictive Class A standard – there is no Class Standard in Ontario.
• Copper, lead and zinc levels were too high from the biosolids, and the restrictive standards in Ontario prevents doing this.
• Recent standards have higher levels for copper ad zinc.
• Septage study. Visited sites in New Brunswick and Maine where most of them are.
• Clean Earth company dewater septage so it can be composted.
• Envirem in Fredricton they compost 400,000 tonnes, combined biosolids and organics, in open windrows. Gave other examples.
• With septage you get grease, which is difficult to compost, so in Maine they collect grease separately to make biodiesel.
• Starting in Maine to move into food waste based on what they’ve learned from biosolids and co-composting.
• Described Muskoka situation approval to compost biosolids, paper sludge, food waste, and septage. Will use initially
• Cant’s wish list – wanted the ministry to see: Removal of outdated feedstock restrictions, adoption by Ontario of CCME A and B guidelines, new compost guidelines and regulations.
• In North America there are 300 biosolids composting facilities, 20 MSW and 4,000 leaf and yard waste composting facilities.

8. Paul van der Werf (2cg)
• Presentation on biodegradable plastics
• Principle: composting is product manufacturing first and waste diversion second.
• Product must be good quality, as well as meeting regulatory requirements.
• We must take care with materials in feed stocks. We can take non-degradable plastics out of the material, but it’s a challenge and a cost.
• Degradable plastics have potential, but haven’t established their place in the market yet.
• Plastic types: water soluble followed by degradation; photodegradable; oxy-degradation; biodegradable; compostable.
• Really needs to be compostable to be of benefit to the composting system, of which it should be a part.
• Third-party accreditation. American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), 1999, 2004 updated. D-6400. Scope is plastic that composts in an aerobic process.
• Challenge that it has to work as a product on the shelf, in the home, during transport, but then degrades quickly in the compost process. No adverse effects on the soil you’re composting in.
• Biodegradable Plastics Institute (BPI); US Composting Council (USCC) Scientific Review Committee. Compostable Logo.
• Described the certification process.
• Certification brings some kind of certainty to purchasers and municipalities. We need a body of information from the field, scientifically tested. But even if we had the perfect compostable bag, there are issues: (a) enforceability – what will prevent people from using other bags (b) cost.
• Purple bags idea

9. Susan Antler (CCC)
• Recyc-Quebec is gong to embark on a certification program for biodegradable bags. $39,000 process. BNQ will undertake a review through the Standards Council of Canada.
• Six-month review process. Will make use of the ASTM, two other standards so as to not reinvent what has been established elsewhere.
• Committee meetings, public meetings, public input, SCC gives number/endorsement. Process will be complete in 2006.
• Companies will pay to be certified and will receive a BPI-style stamp.
• Oxo-biodegradable bags not to be considered at this time but could be included in an amendment. The goal is to move ahead and it was thought the Oxo’s would slow down the process.

9. Pat Parker (City of Hamilton)
• Collection 50/50public/private. 10 side loaders, 18 rear loaders.
• Larger carts from IPL for most areas, smaller Rehrig carts for areas where accessibility is more difficult.
• Jacques Whitford helping stay on top of Green Team plans.
• F&M Distribution will distribute the carts.
• Communications strategy. Booklet, magnet, mini bin sticker and liner.
• TV, PR, newspaper, addressing problem issues (e.g., pests)
• $30 million organics plant opening in spring 2006.
• Hamilton has a “no plastics program” and found no plastics in the pilots after proper education.
• Multi-residential sector requires special strategy.

10. Dave Milliner (Township of Southgate)
• Described the township’s rural cart-based organics program

11. Jen Turnbull (City of Guelph)
• Examined the use of clear bags for the residual stream and its impact on organics diversion.

12. Susan Antler (CCC)
• Spoke about success stories from the field.

13. Michael Payne (Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs)
• Spoke about soil in his presentation “Soil 101 – a prime

3:45 Wrap-up

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'll be away from blogging tomorrow because of the very worthwhile distraction of attending "Organics & 2008: Moving Towards 60% Diversion" -- a one-day symposium presented jointly by the Association of Municipal Recycling Coordinators (AMRC) and the Composting Council of Canada (CCC). The program is excellent and includes a presentation I'm keen to take in by our Composting Matters columnist Paul van der Werf and CCC Executive Director Susan Antler on ASTM biodegradables and oxo-biodegradables. This is timely indeed, since I just wrote my editorial for the December/January edition on that very topic and will no doubt learn a thing or two that could be useful as I apply the finishing touches to that piece of writing. I'll post a short report about the event in this space on Wednesday.

In other news, I'm very pleased about developments on a couple of fronts with respect to our internet offerings. These include a terrific response so far to our annual online survey (the one where you can win an iPod) which has attracted 278 respondents so far. I have to tell you that we used to spend a fortune trying to get that many folks to reply to an industry survey in the days of snail mail. And the results so far are really interesting -- enough that I plan to make this the cover story of the February/March edition. There's still time to participate, so don't procrastinate -- fill in the survey now and you'll have a chance at winning one of three iPod products.

Also, the results of our Speakers Corner short survey on issues related to a possible U.S. border closure to Canadian waste exports have been tabulated, and we published them on our website today as a downloadable pdf file (look under Posted Documents on the left side of the home page). This is terrific information, with color charts and tabulated results and lots of ideas and opinions at the end. And best of all, we're giving it to you FREE.

Last, but not least, an important industry person with a long association with our magazine has agreed to participate on this website by writing a blog of his own. I'll make a formal announcement soon, but I'm very happy about this, because the interactive dimension of the magazine online is about to become much more robust.

Watch this space for more announcements soon (and a write-up about the AMRC/CCC organics symposium on Wednesday). Cheers.

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 5:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was pleased to see a news item on the wires today concerning the New Orlenas ASL site, a notorious old Superfund landfill that was submerged by Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters. Although I won't take credit for the coverage of the unfolding story (and I wasn't the only one to worry about contamination in general), I will take credit for being the first journalist to write specifically about the ASL site and figure out from map overlays that it was submerged under floodwater, soon after the hurricane hit.

(I reproduce the intial news item below, that we covered in more detail in the subsequent print magazine.)

I'd like to share with readers my frustration in trying to share this story with the major news outlets in the U.S. and one happy outcome. I have contacts in the USA who know producers at CNN, NBC, ABC etc. and they put me in touch with those producers; I emailed those producers the story, and never heard back. I could understand why they were focused on the humanitarian crisis in the early days of the event, but what frustrated me was that after some time, TV stations like CNN started to "jump the shark" a bit and show highly repetitious footage and run stories that seemed increasingly frivolous. It looked to me like they were trying to fill air time, and were desperate for a fresh angle.

That's why I couldn't understand them ignoring not just the contamination story in general (there was very little perspective or detail offered to viewers) but this especially scary "made for prime time" angle of the flooded Superfund site. But there you go, you never can figure what the TV stations and larger papers are going to cotton on to.

Then an independent producer who sells his stuff to major networks got hold of my story and pitched it. Someone at National Public Radio (NPR) took an interst, but did nothing with the story. I was told to expect a call any time. No call came. I then found out that a reporter at NPR took my story and developed her own version, which ran on NPR. She gave me no attribution at all. I actually sent her an email and told her that her actions felt like intellectual property theft to me. I was steamed, as was the independent producer who had promoted the story in the first place (and had conducted a pre-interview with me on the phone.) She (predictably) blew me off with an email saying she had the idea anyway and other people had contacted her about the ASL site and so on. (Yeah, sure.)

So it was satisfying when yet another producer for NPR called me out of the blue, having independently stumbled across my ASL site story by Googling on the internet. He was intrigued and conducted an interview over the phone. His interview with me ran on a highly popular morning program that runs during the rush hour, which is when most people have their radios turned on in their cars. The show has about half a million listeners. I was very satisfied that at last my version of the story got out, with my name attached to it.

As an aside, a technician attended my end of the phone interview, because it had to be synced digitally with the NPR studio in the U.S. After he heard the interview, he commented that he has a lot of experience with that NPR radio show and he suggested that of the 15 minute conversation, about four minutes would actually make it to air after editing. And he added that it would likely be the most sensational statements I made, quoted out of context. When I heard the program, I found he was absolutely right. The interview was quite good, but the producers definitely ran with the most "shocking" statements, minus the more subtle context.

The whole experience made me glad I work for a trade magazine where we can take the time and space to tell stories in more detail and in context, and not the superficial radio or TV media, where that sometimes ephemeral "media is the message."

Postscript: Over time I'll follow up on this story and find out what the government does (or does not do) about investigating possible contamination from the old landfill, and a couple of others that were also submerged by Katrina's floodwaters.

Now, for those of you who missed the story the first time, here's what we ran on our website on September 1st.

"Love Canal-type landfill submerged in New Orleans floodwaters"

A Solid Waste & Recycling magazine exclusive

Overlooked in many news reports about the unfolding storm disaster in the southern United States, especially in the City of New Orleans, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, is a potentially dramatic pollution issue related to a toxic landfill that sits under the flood waters right in the city's downtown, according to map overlays of the flooded area. The situation could exacerbate the already dire threat to human health and the environment from the flood waters.

The Agriculture Street Landfill (ASL) is situated on a 95-acre site in New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana. The ASL is a federally registered Superfund site, and is on the National Priorities List of highly contaminated sites requiring cleanup and containment. A few years ago the site, which sits underneath and beside houses and a school, was fenced and covered with clean soil. However, three feet or more of flood waters could potentially cause the landfill's toxic contents – the result of decades of municipal and industrial waste dumping – to leach out.

Houses and buildings that were constructed in later years directly atop parts of the landfill. Residents report unusual cancers and health problems and have lobbied for years to be relocated away from the old contaminated site, which contains not only municipal garbage, but buried industrial wastes such as what would be produced by service stations and dry cleaners, manufacturers or burning. The site was routinely sprayed with DDT in the 1940s and 50s and, in 1962, 300,000 cubic yards of excess fill were removed from ASL because of ongoing subsurface fires. (The site was nicknamed "Dante's Inferno" because of the fires.)

The ASL can be thought of a sort of Love Canal for New Orleans -– and now it sits under water.

The ASL site is three miles south of Lake Pontchartrain and about 2.5 north-northeast of the city's central business district (roughly halfway between the old French Quarter and the shore of Lake Pontchartrain).

Disturbingly, the site is also very close to the Industrial Canal Levee, a section of which collapsed and allowed flood waters to pour in, almost directly in the direction of the ASL site.

Government reports describe ASL as being "bounded on the north by Higgins Boulevard and south and west by Southern Railroads right-of-ways. The eastern boundary of the landfill extends from the cul-de-sac at the southern end of Clouet Street, near the railroad tracks to Higgins Boulevard between Press and Montegut Streets."

Locate that site on a map (see websites below), and then overlay published maps of New Orleans flooding, and one finds the old toxic landfill is situated right in the middle of a huge area of three-foot flooding. That industrial area is almost continuously connected with water to the downtown and northern areas of the city. It's not outlandish to consider the possibility that toxic waste from the landfill may mix with floodwaters and spread far beyond the old landfill site.

Although the humanitarian rescue operation must take precedence at the current time, authorities and the public must not overlook this pollution situation, which in both the near and long-term may be dangerous to human health and the environment. We must hope that emergency responders will investigate this site as soon as possible and take steps to mitigate potential off-site migration of hazardous materials. It may be that sandbag walls are required here, as well as on the broken levees.

This magazine will update the situation as more information becomes available.

Story prepared by Guy Crittenden, editor. Contact 705-445-0361 or gcrittenden@solidwastemag.com (See useful websites below.)

Useful websites:

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/PHA/agriculturestreet/asl_p3.html

This website offers the Appendix to the government Public Health Assessment and further technical details about the site, plus a small map at the end.

http://www.umich.edu/~snre492/Jones/agstreet.htm

Environmental Justice Case Study website offers a detailed description of the Agriculture Street Landfill, and the history of pollution problems and residents seeking to relocate:

http://www.nbc17.com/hurricanes/4887230/detail.html

NBC-17.com website offers interactive map of New Orleans flooded areas. (Look near top of blue sidebar at right beside main story for "Interactive: New Orleans' Damage.")

http://maps.google.com

Google map of New Orleans can be pulled up at this website. Enter "Higgins Blvd., New Orleans" to get the approximate location of the landfill, then compare this with the NBC-17 map. (Note: you can zoom in and out, and toggle around this Google map, and also hit "satellite" in the upper right to switch from map view to a satellite view of the terrain.)

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday (Wednesday, November 30) I attended the Property Management Expo (PM Expo) which is currently running at the Toronto Convention Centre (south building) with our magazine's Publisher Brad O'Brien.

This is an excellent show for anyone whose business involves serving the waste and recycling needs of properties and their managers in the Greater Toronto Area, and places beyond as well. It's also a good event for making contacts in the construction industry, if C&D waste is your thing, since the PM Expo is held in conjunction with Construct Canada and two other building and design-related trade shows.

Most (but not all) of the waste service companies are in the PM Expo portion of the show, the entrance to which is at the base of the main escalators. (Note: Parking can be a problem near this facility. I suggest you park south of the event in the municipal parking lots near Harbourfront, then walk north to the "south building.")

Brad and I visited the staff at the show booths for VPF Waste & Recycling Inc. (Rocco Volpe and Vince Ciano), BFI Canada, Wasteco (Steve House), Waste Management (Dave Brown). We caught up with some familiar contacts, some of whom are old friends, in related environmental service companies such as FLR: Fluorescent Lamp Recyclers (Martin Hassenbach), Restoration Environmental Contractors (Don Bremner), Axxess Environmental (Craig Dewar), Terrasan (Rob Boyko) and Harper Detroit Diesel (Mark Lenarcic).

We also met briefly with Trevor Harris -- one of the original environmental service company founders in this country -- and wanted to say hello to another industry builder, Don Pinchin of Pinchin Associates, but every time we approached his booth he was swamped with customers (and we didn't want to get in the way of him potentially "making a deal"). We met with Nello De Carli of Wilkinson Chutes Canada, whose company will no doubt be busy in the next few years helping Toronto high-rises as they gear up to comply with new waste diversion requirements for multi-residential buildings.

After we toured the show, Brad and I headed up to the Prince Hotel to catch the end of the "Year in Review" environmental legislation conference. The event ( http://www.yearinreview.ca) was well-attended, and the coctail reception afterward was enjoyed by all. The one-day conference is put on by the Eco Log Group, of which Solid Waste & Recycling is a part.

And that reminds me of one last thing: I'd like to explain that our magazine, like the other Eco Log Group products, is published by Business Information Group (also known by the wonderful acronym B.I.G.). B.I.G. is a subsidiary of Hollinger Canadian Newspapers LLP, a division still owned by the company headquartered in Chicago that also publishes the Chigao Sun-Times (and other media entities). You'll likely just think of us in terms of our magazine name, but sometimes people have asked me who owns us, and now you know.

(As an aside, I was one of three people in a partnership who founded the magazine ten years ago and sold it to Hollinger in 2000, along with the magazine now known as HazMat Management, which I used to also edit.)

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

If you're interested in replying to any messages here, please do so. Just click on the small green word "comment" on the bottom of any post and add follow the isntructions to the message thread.

Let's keep the discussions focused on the business of waste management, recycling, composting, product stewardship and all that good stuff. I'll have to delete anything that is offensive or inappropriate.

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

At last, I have the opportunity to share my views (and generate responses from you!) in this internet forum hosted by our magazine Solid Waste & Recycling.

With the magazine appearing six times per year, the two month interval between editions is often too long a time not to be in touch. Readers probably don't realize (or maybe they do) how much goes on in our industry that, for space reasons, just can't be reported in the magazine. Some developments are time-sensitive, and although we can post them as headline news items on our website home page, that venue doesn't lend itself to commentary and analysis.

Watch this space regularly for short reports by me on industry events, policy developments that affect our industry, new technologies, and some industry gossip. Some of our regular contributors will be be blogging here soon as well.

You can respond to anything you read here and make your opinions known. I invite everyone to join in the discussion and make this website the "must read" space on the internet for our industry!

Posted by Guy Crittenden at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)