Letters to the Minister of Environment on Effect of Incineration of Recycling and EPR

To send a short pre-written letter re: Effect of Incineration on Recycling and EPR - Please click here!

To send a longer personalized letter, follow the instructions below:

Step 1.  CLICK HERE to open your email composer. It will already contain the full list of recipients and a subject line but you can add, remove or change any of these.

Step 2.  Below are a series of text elements which you can copy and paste to create your custom letter. When created this way there is no limit on how long the letters can be. If you like you can can combine all the pieces below into a single letter but you would probably want to do some editing.

Step 3.  Add your full name and address at the end.

Step 4.  Click SEND

The proposed incinerator’s operation is only viable if diversion measures are frozen at current levels in direct contradiction to repeated assurances to Councillors and the public that the Region would continue aggressive recycling programs.
(Note that Durham Region already has one of the highest diversion rates in the province -52% across the whole region in 2009 with some local municipalities achieving 60%.)

The Business Case prepared for Durham Region by Deloitte, May 15, 2008, provides projected tonnages of residual waste on page 15. The columns for diversion & residual have been added to illustrate the argument. The projected tonnages include all growth factors including population.

In January 2008 Regional Council passed a directive THAT the Region of Durham agrees to continue to support an aggressive residual waste diversion and recycling program in order to achieve on or before December 2010, a 70% diversion recycling rate for the entire Region and such aggressive programs shall continue beyond 2010.

Nothing was done until December 2008 when Golder Associates were engaged to provide the roadmap.
Golder submitted their report in March 2009 on how the Region can achieve 70% diversion by 2013 and 72.7% in 2015 with a detailed costing of $7.5million capital cost (total) and annual incremental operating costs rising to $6 million per year.

Nothing has been done to implement this. Why not?

Because Durham Region is committed to providing 100,000 tonnes of waste for the incinerator and at 70% diversion there would not be enough.

Here is the chart above with 70% applied as of 2012

The highlighted numbers are well below the 100,000 tonnes guaranteed in order to ensure the incinerator operates efficiently, hence the Region cannot increase diversion to 70% and still build an incinerator.

A further problem with the Deloitte chart is that it shows diversion stalled at 70%, whereas everybody says they want to keep increasing diversion to near 100%.

If you apply a very modest 1% per year increase, the above chart looks like this (For the last 20 years Durham has been increasing diversion at approx 2.5% per year)

Note that the residual waste is way below what is required to fuel the incinerator.
The only reasonable conclusion is Deloitte presented the diversion numbers that it did because they are the only ones that provide the incinerator with sufficient garbage – Diversion measures will need to be stalled at or near current levels if the incinerator is to operate efficiently.

The Ministry of the Environment has set out a clear path towards waste reduction in 2 recent documents

• October 2008 Discussion Paper “Towards a Zero-Waste Future: Review of Ontario’s Waste Diversion Act”
• Fall 2009 “FROM WASTE TO WORTH: The Role of Waste Diversion in the Green Economy”

These are the right course - the only sustainable approach to waste. 

The proponents own numbers indicate that even with stalled diversion initiatives, there will have barely enough waste for this incinerator.

With the implementation of Extended Producer Responsibility producers (manufacturer and importers) will be striving to recover their products post-use, which will reduce the waste stream that the Region wants to burn.