Waste to Energy in Metro Vancouver

If Metro Vancouver is moving towards increased recycling, composting garden-green waste and even collecting and composting food waste, one has to wonder, just what is left to be consumed by the oft-discussed waste-to-energy incinerators?

Recycling of paper products including newspaper and cardboard should take those products out of the waste stream and therefore out of the furnace of any incinerator. All containers of plastics and metals can be recycled into new containers or park benches or what-have-you. Old electronics should be sent to recyclers to be taken apart and salvaged.

What is left over to be sent to the incinerators? Plastic wrappers and styrofoam? Are these really the products we want to see being burned in our region? Do we really want an incinerator releasing fumes into our atmosphere from the burning of plastics?

Why is it that growing population equals increasing waste? What if we were simply not allowed to put garbage out at the curbside? What would happen if we had to pay every time we wanted to put one small garbage can out at the curb for pick up? And conversely, we could recycle anything and everything; we could put food waste out for local compost facilities and garden waste out for composting .

Turn the system upside down; make it more expensive to throw stuff out than it is to recycle it. Give people a reason to recycle, reduce and reuse materials rather than making it easy to “throw it out”.