Update on Zero Waste – February 2022
The City is currently gearing up for its second round of public engagement, which will be an important one as it will be our chance, over five weeks, to weigh in on various Waste Plan options, laid out in the Phase 2 report. Soon they will be consulting broadly with residents and stakeholders through focus groups, themed public dialogue sessions and a survey on Engage Ottawa. The GCA Environment Committee through the Community Associations for Environmental Sustainability will be providing input and of course anyone can engage as private citizens as well.
In preparation for this next phase, here is an update on the Curbside Garbage Collection Options process.

The public engagement on the three options that occurred through a survey last August-Sept. The three options under consideration were: (1) partial pay-as-you-throw (PAYT); (2) firm bag limits; and (3) clear bags with recycling and organics bans. Following this engagement, the City compiled a draft “What we Heard” report and solicited stakeholder feedback as to whether there were any considerations missing.

The findings report suggested:

  • that the most popular option was the partial pay-as-you-throw
  • many people wanted to see the bag/item limit, which is currently 6 items per collection per household and not enforced, reduced to 3 items per collection per household (this would apply to all three options)
  • If both of these measures were to move forward in tandem, it would mean that each household would have an allowance of 3 items (bags, bins etc.) that they would be entitled to put out for free, and only for items beyond those three would they be charged for.

CAFES’ main response was that this would seem to be not a strong enough disincentive to really make significant change, as already 81% of households put out three items or less. Making waste collection into a municipal service like any other utility, for which residents must pay, has been found elsewhere to be a winning strategy. However, the loophole of allowing three items free would be too large.

We asked why a full pay-as-you-throw policy was not put forward as one of the options for discussion (Full PAYT involves no freebies) and suggested that more research go into the experience of Toronto, which charges residents differentially for different sized bins. The response received from the City was that this would require a completely different financing set-up and would hence need a full business case, for which there is not enough time.

Another item is the Residuals Management Planning framework. “Residuals” refers to all the leftover waste generated in the city that is not either recycled or composted. To date in Ottawa, residual waste goes to landfill for processing, mainly the Trail Road landfill facility. A high-level “framework” document on how to develop the Residuals Management Plan was approved in October, which includes six “opportunities” to be actioned over the next 1-3 years. Of these six, two seemed to CAFES to be problematic: (1) assessing the potential for the redirection of City waste to private landfills; and (2) developing a framework for pilot projects, which would be projects in which we could “try out” technologies that are as of yet untested at scale, such as Landaira’s gasification proposal (which was presented by its proponents and discussed at length at a previous Standing Committee on Environmental Protection, Water and Waste Management (SCEPWWM) meeting earlier in the Fall).

CAFES’ raised four issues in their written submission:
1) Transparency of the timeline: The Residuals Management planning falls under the Solid Waste Master Plan (SWMP) as a component part, and yet it follows its own timetable. This is problematicbecause one of the most contentious aspects of the SWMP – i.e. what happens to the bulk of our City’s waste – which involves massive infrastructure development and capital costs and will define our waste management for years to come – will effectively get decided upon only after the SWMP is approved. They are wanting to do an initial market scan of existing residuals management technologies only in Q2 of 2023, which would then lead to the development of a multi-year pilot (or pilots), and only then a decision made on which residuals management technology to move forward with.

2) Waste management hierarchy: Focusing on residuals management now, when hardly anything has been put in place to reduce our waste footprint, or even to divert our existing waste from landfill, is highly problematic. From a waste hierarchy standpoint, one needs to work much harder at reducing waste, then try to improve our recycling, and only then ascertain whether our landfill is still in jeopardy. Gasification technologies such as Landaira’s depend on having enough carbon content in the waste mix (e.g. plastics and bio-based materials like wood). If we do our job aggressively in reducing our plastic waste and in diverting bio-based materials from landfill, then a facility like that would not need to exist, and from a technical standpoint, might not even work.

3) Redirecting waste to private landfills: If the pressure is taken off the Trail Road landfill by supplementing our available space by redirecting some of our waste to secondary, private landfills, then the impetus to reduce our waste footprint (see #2 above) is lessened. And not all private landfills capture the landfill gases like Trail Road has successfully done, which increases GHG emissions.

4) Development of pilot projects for new technologies: Why institutionalize pilot projects as a preferred methodology for decision-making on new technologies? Many will remember Ottawa’s experience with the so-called Plasco fiasco, which involved a two-year demonstration project, and eventually it came to light that the project was commercially unviable. Why not buy tested technologies, that are competitively bid on, or nothing at all? Landaira has requested a pilot project, to be paid for at public expense, and some of the same players from the Plasco timeframe are again involved.

Councillor Menard’s office requested that the Residuals Management framework be socialized with the Stakeholder Sounding Board (SSB) before going to full Council. At the SSB meeting, again many of these (and other) concerns were raised, but ultimately it was passed by Council the following day. Councillor Menard’s motion at Council however succeeded in ensuring that the SSB minutes got included as part of the official record of decision.

Summarized from correspondence from Kate Reekie, GCA Environment Committee lead on Zero Waste.
If you are interested in getting involved in local advocacy efforts or initiatives that reduce waste and
promote a circular economy in our neighbourhood, please reach out to environment@glebeca.ca.