Major topics this week Waste as art ?? Salient background on the production/recycling of waste

1. Waste Management & Environmental Toxicology Major topics this week Waste as art ?? Salient background on the production/recycling of waste Waste as a resource ?? Composition of waste: hazardous vs. radioactive waste Management options and innovations: e.g. City of Burnaby Case Study: Zero Waste in Vancouver ?? Toxic waste management and regulation: Guest Speaker will be a member of Dr. Frank Gobas’ research group from REM on Wednesday

2. Edward Burtynsky: Waste as Art? Vancouver Art Gallery

3. Pertinent Background on Waste By the age of 6 months, the average Canadian consumes as many resources as the average person in the developing world in a lifetime Average North American will throw away 600 times his or her adult weight in garbage over their life About 1/3 of our waste is paper and paperboard. Another 1/3 is yard and kitchen waste. The rest is divided among glass, metals, plastics, textiles, wood and other materials Plastic products contribute 7% by weight and 30% by volume to municipal solid waste (MSW) Across Canada garbage disposal costs $1.5 billion per There are over 10,000 landfill sites in Canada

4. What about Recycling? Automobile are the most recycled product: it takes 45 seconds to shred an automobile into fist-sized pieces for recycling The first PET (plastic) bottle was recycled in 1977 Nearly 55% of every aluminium can is made from recycled aluminium About 25% of the energy used to manufacture cardboard is saved when the cardboard is recycled The Sunday New York Times consumes about 75,000 trees Recycling one tonne of newspaper saves 19 trees, 3 cubic metres of landfill space, 4,000 kilowatt hours of energy, 29,000 litres of water and 30 kgs of air pollution

5. Waste Generation • Waste differs from other resources: • Unlike most other resources, the resource base for waste has been steadily increasing • Modern waste management practice aims to reduce rather than to increase or sustain the resource base • Waste generation rates and waste composition vary spatially within a community, over time, and across economic sectors • Three waste streams are kept separate for disposal purposes: • Municipal, commercial and industrial waste • Hazardous waste • Radioactive waste

6. Waste Composition: Hazardous Waste Hazardous wastes are those that have the potential to cause harm to human beings or to other organisms They are toxic, corrosive, flammable, explosive, reactive, or pathological No agencies in Canada collect comprehensive data on the generation of hazardous waste By definition, radioactive wastes are hazardous wastes, but they are classified in a category of their own Of particular concern are left over paints and medicines discarded by households

7. Hazardous Waste, cont’d Disposal Choice for Selected Household Leftover Paints & Medicines, Canada, 2006

8. Waste Composition: Radioactive Waste Uranium Mine Tailings, Ontario • Wastes with different levels of radioactivity require different disposal methods: High level (nuclear reactor fuel) vs. Low level (uranium mine tailings) • Half-life of the radionuclide = the amount of time that it takes the activity of a radionuclide to decay by half. • Radionuclides are generally harmless after they have decayed for 10 half-lives. • The half-lives of some of the most common radionuclides range from 8 days for Iodine-131 to 4.5 billion years for Uranium-238 (in uranium mine tailings) Source: E. Burtynsky

9. Waste Management Options • Waste can be seen as a resource with value, not simply something to burn or bury • Waste reduction strategies focus on the management of both post-consumer and post-production wastes • Waste disposal: landfill or incinerate—which is better? • Reuse strategies (Salvation Army, etc.) • Recycling, source-separated materials and “diversion” rates vary by province [Note: “waste diversion” is the process of diverting waste from disposal]

10. Residential Waste Diversion Rates by Province, 2006

11. Waste Management Options, cont`d • A waste management hierarchy: • source reduction, • reuse, • recycling • biological treatment • thermal treatment (typically with energy recovery), and • landfill • Life cycle analysis (LCA) studies confirm recycling is better for the environment than incineration with energy recovery [Note: LCA is a technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life from cradle-to-grave] • But incineration with energy recovery is better than landfilling

12. Innovations in Waste Policy Households normally pay for waste collection services as part of property taxes They don’t see how much they are paying for waste collection and disposal User-pay programs—assign a price per unit of waste, to provide an incentive to reduce waste .. but critics say they encourage illegal dumping Extended producers responsibility—deposits on bottles, packaging regulations, etc. Electronic waste (e-waste) recycling Is zero waste an option? (see Vancouver case study)

13. City of Burnaby - 2013 Residential Garbage Toter Disposal Fees (from website) In order to ensure that the cost to dispose of garbage is visible to Burnaby residents, beginning in 2013, these costs will appear as a separate item on your Utility and Garbage Disposal Fee Bill. The shift will not change the total dollar amount paid by Burnaby citizens to Metro Vancouver for garbage disposal. It will however, make the cost visible to taxpayers and will enable citizens to save money by increasing their recycling and disposing of less garbage. Starting in 2013, the following Garbage Disposal Fees will be charged to residents based on the size garbage toter they have: Source: City of Burnaby website www.burnaby.ca/City-Services/Garbage

14. Waste Management Facility Siting • Types of facilities: landfills, incinerators, transfer stations, composting facilities, and recycling plants [Note: transfer station is where waste is transferred from small to large collection vehicles] • Siting waste management facilities has become a conflict-ridden process .. politically sensitive • Not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) syndrome prevails • Screening of site areas: various environmental, economic and social criteria are used • Public involvement/consultations are critical ..

15. Case Study: New Initiatives for Waste Management in Vancouver • In 2012, 1,871,339 t of materials were recycled and diverted from disposal in Metro Vancouver (58% of all waste) • Remaining 1,356,966 t of waste were managed at Regional Facilities including the waste-to-energy facility • Of this, 358,691 tonnes were construction and demolition materials • For 2012, the multi-family residential recycling rate was estimated to be about 27% • Approximately 50,000 t of solid waste from commercial generators and multi-family residential buildings were disposed of out of region (going up .. 70,000 t in 2013!) • Source: City of Vancouver 2012 Recycling and Solid Waste Summary

16. Residential Waste Composition, Metro Vancouver, 2004.

17. New Waste Management Initiatives: National Zero Waste Council • Founded by Metro Vancouver in collaboration with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) • Aims to strengthen awareness of the need to reduce waste at source and encourage the changes needed to achieve it: • Design for the environment refers to changes in products and packaging that take into account the product life cycle • Preventing waste means reducing the amount of waste generated, hazardous content and impact on the environment. • Education and social marketing campaigns sway consumer decisions toward more durable and recyclable products.

18. City of Vancouver: Towards Zero Waste? • Under the Greenest City 2020 Action Plan, Vancouver set a target to reduce solid waste going to the landfill or incinerator by 50% • To achieve this goal, the City is committed to: • Expanding the existing citywide Green Bin Program to allow the collection of all household food waste • Developing education and enforcement programs to keep recyclables out of the waste stream • Advocating for more Extended Producer Responsibility programs for packaging • Developing a building deconstruction program • Still a ways to go … See: www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/metro-vancouver-scraps-plan-for-recycling-garbage-disposal/article14156607/