A new recycling model aims to make manufacturers responsible for processing products at end of life, rather than taxpayers. Extended producer responsibility (EPR) has already been put into legislation in five out of 10 provinces (Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba), and has been used in Europe for over 30 years. But, Nova Scotia […]
Garbage
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax’s apartment buildings are a trash-sorting dumpster fire, residents say
L iving in an apartment building can have its benefits. There’s security, there are facilities and the buildings provide services for tenants. For every residential building with more than six units in HRM, one of those services is garbage collection. “Each apartment building is required to have five bins in the waste room in the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How Halifax composts 50,000 tonnes of material a year.
H alifax has been composting since before it was cool, way back in 1998. These days, the municipality composts about 50,000 tonnes of compost every year—almost twice as much as it recycles. That’s about 100 tonnes a day, or the equivalent of 13,000 curb-side green carts. The Miller Waste facility, on Gloria McCluskey Avenue in […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Curb-side enthusiasm: a guide to sorting your garbage
FIRST THINGS FIRSTThe city has a kick-ass app for garbage collection that will send you notifications reminding you when to put yours out, and what exactly you should be kicking to the curb. It’s a game-changer, so download it now and become a trash wizard. RECYCLINGYour blue bag is for plastic, glass, paper and aluminium […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
An anaerobic exercise for Halifax’s compost system
Halifax’s biggest university could end up powered by the city’s rotting food scraps. The municipality is looking for a new and improved composting operation, and the possibility it will include an anaerobic digestion system has industry stakeholders excited. The municipality’s current compost system is over-capacity and doesn’t comply with the latest guidelines set by the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Nova Scotia’s recycling efforts plateaued 15 years ago
In a recent self-assessed report card, the Otter Lake Community Monitoring Committee released the results of a December waste audit that found 52 percent of residential waste and 71 percent of business waste was reusable, recyclable or compostable material. “It was a surprise to us that the numbers were that high,” says Ken Donnelly, a […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax’s recycling plant in need of expansion
[Image-1] The good news is Halifax is recycling more. The bad news is all those extra bottles and cans have put HRM’s recycling plant past its operational capacity. Currently the Bayers Lake facility can process 28,000 tonnes annually. In July, Regional Council approved an expansion to raise that limit by an additional 8,000 tonnes. The expansion […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Everything residents are calling 311 to complain about
[Image-1] SNOW Just how bad was last winter’s snow-clearing? Bad enough that 15 percent of all calls to 311 were requests for plowing, salting and sanding roads. That’s by far the largest segment of the roughly 95,000 calls 311‘s call centre received from HRM residents from January through to August last year. Residents also […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
You won’t believe where your garbage leaves can now be shoved
[Image-1] Paper or plastic? Doesn’t matter, because you can now cram your lawn junk into either. Effective immediately, the Halifax Regional Municipality is advising residents that curb-side collection of excess leaf and yard waste will be accepted in clear and orange plastic bags, along with large paper bags. Under the new garbage collection laws which came […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Tuesday’s 6 things you’d better know by now
1 Summer means no school and little political action, so crime is continuing to dominate the headlines. Police are looking for someone who b<a href="http://metronews.ca/news/halifax/1439864/hot-water-poured-on-man-sleeping-on-street-in-halifax-suffers-burns-to-face/" target="_blank"burned a sleeping man’s face by pouring hot water on him. The cops have also pressed charges against a 20-year-old man who stabbed another male then politely drove his victim […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Monday’s 8 things you need to know
1 Rain. It has one thing going for it—the whole providing-life-giving-water deal—but otherwise needs some serious help in the image department. From the way it blocks the sun, to how uncomfortable it is to encounter, rain sucks. And it’s not making any friends by ruining Argyle Street’s nice new paint job. The city’s pilot project […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Price check: Who’s selling the cheapest clear garbage bags?
[Image-1] Call us Pepsi’s disastrous early-90s marketing fad, because Halifax is going clear. Starting this Saturday, all residents of the municipality will need to bag up their trash in transparent bags. It’s a bit of rubbish voyeurism to increase sorting and cut down on what’s headed to the city’s landfill. Love it or hate it, […]