RECYCLING. These graphs show, in tonnes, materials recycled (grey bar) and sent to Metro’s landfills/incinerator (black). The graph on the left is what waste looks like today and the right graph shows what it will look like 30 years from now under Metro’s new plan. They will tinker at the margins on the easy-to-recycle materials like newspaper and cardboard, while allowing continuing growth in throw-away products and packaging (plastics, “other”). Note, too, that Metro is planning to burn 60% of our food wastes and compostable paper in incinerators rather than composting them.
DISPOSAL. This graph produced by Metro Vancouver shows that the plan is really all about continuing waste growth and building new disposal facilities. Metro plans to turn the Vancouver landfill into a permanent ash dump and build new incinerators that will expand capacity to keep up with the self-fulfilling waste projections. At a time when we should be putting our waste on a diet, Metro is proposing we let out our belts.
Metro Vancouver’s Burnaby incinerator was built in 1988 next to Agricultural Land Reserve land in the Big Bend of Burnaby. This field, being harvested by field workers in August 2008, is directly downwind of the incinerator during the prevailing easterly winds that blow all winter. In the summer, the winds blow up the Fraser Valley.
Metro says incinerators are being built “right in the downtowns” of European and Japanese cities and they promise to do the same thing here. They are planning either three large incinerators (North Shore, North of Fraser and South of Fraser) or six smaller ones at the region’s garbage transfer stations. The Burnaby incinerator will continue to operate.
The total system would burn 1.3 million tonnes of waste each year, quadrupling the current levels of toxic incinerator/gasification emissions in our shared airshed.
Councillor Patricia Ross from the City of Abbotsford points out, “No other place in North America or Europe has that many incinerators in a single airshed.” Abbotsford City Council and the Fraser Valley Regional District Board have written to Metro Vancouver opposing the incinerator plan.
Along with air emissions, the incinerators/ gasifiers would produce 200,000 tonnes of toxic ash or slag each year. This would have to be trucked through our communities to the Burns Bog landfill in Delta. Burns Bog would become a permanent ash dump.