Last year we spoke to Darren Welner—sales and marketing
coordinator for Scotia Recycling, the largest recycling business in the
province—about a trial project to recycle Tim Hortons cups. As an
update to that piece, he reports the Yarmouth trial run had positive
results: Cups were successfully processed and their constituent fibres
were found to be marketable and sold for use elsewhere. Now the program
is running from Greenwood to Windsor, and later this year may be
introduced in New Glasgow or Cape Breton.
“The main thing is the paper mill can only take so much of this
product,” says Welner. “It’s a slow process.” So, here in HRM we
shouldn’t expect to be able to recycle Tim Hortons cups within the next
year, say.
But what about other new recycling and green initiatives in Halifax,
once known nationally for being a part of the recycling and composting
vanguard? Well, the HRM’s website of city recycling information has an
enormous amount of detail on how our tax dollars are being spent to
help keep the process moving. Visit halifax.ca/wrms, which includes an
“alternatives to landfill” list of suggestions of local businesses
offering recycling services.
But it takes more than an informative website to remain progressive,
as the technology continues to improve. Many restaurants and businesses
are offering products they call biodegradable—containers for
take-out, cups for coffee, plastic bags—but none of these new
products have been endorsed by the municipality. So while one less
Styrofoam or plastic container can’t be a bad thing, if they’re not
being accepted in our recycling system, then they will inevitably end
up in a landfill, unless you are lucky enough to have your own private
compost pile in your backyard.
Jim Bauld is a manager of solid waste resources with the city, and
he says some of the new products now on shelves—the ones derived from
corn and bamboo, or the polyactic acid biodegradable clear plastic—is
a real problem for the HRM recycling and composting system.
“It decomposes, but if that gets mixed in with the other hard
plastic at the recycling facility, you can’t tell which kind it is,” he
says. This new plastic is simply not as attractive to the buyers of the
recycled material. “You have to err on the side of caution. Your market
is driven by the quality of the product.” He says with more of these
containers arriving in our community, many manufactured in Europe and
Asia, the HRM can’t adapt quickly to the changes.
“As more and more products claim to be biodegradable,
photodegradable and compostable, the HRM and other municipalities will
have to look at new technology for composting and recycling.”
For the time being, the 20-year contracts for the two facilities in
town were signed in 1998. It will be 2018 before we can consider new
ways of composting in Halifax.
Related Stories
How to recycle and compost properly in HRM
This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2009.
NO! HRM Mayor , Council , and HRM Management are riding on the sucess’s of Ten Years Ago!