zero waste in metro vancouver
I was speaking to a good friend of mine the other day about recycling and the different methods used in the lower mainland when he turned to me and said, ‘uh, aren’t they gonna do this thing where they don’t allow you to put TV’s in the dump anymore?” I told him, “Yeah. It’s called Zero Waste; and we’ve been doing it since the beginning of the year.” On January 1, 2008 Metro Vancouver adopted a Zero Waste policy in our community. For years it’s been generally accepted that we shouldn’t throw things like cardboard, drywall and batteries into the landfills. Well you can now add to that list things like yard trimmings, blue box recyclables, electronic waste, and vehicle tires. If you’re saying to yourself, ‘we already recycle those items’, you’re right, we do. It’s just that now the municipalities plan to enforce those rules in order to make sure we practice what we preach. When waste removal companies haul debris to a landfill or transfer station they are charged by weight – they enter a scale, are weighed, tip their boxes, and exit a scale. Part of implementing the Zero Waste program means that any company dumping any of the banned materials will be charged half their tipping fee. While this deterrent has been in place for years, I can say that in our four years in business our loads were rarely searched, so it will be interesting to see if the rule is finally enforced. To date various employees have let me know that yes, they are checking loads at the dump now. Perhaps the most intriguing item taken off the accepted list is electronic waste. For years electronic waste has been thrown into the metal recycling pile – the logic behind this being that most electronics, aside from televisions, are made of metal. En-Corp, a federal, non-profit stewardship corporation is heading up the electronic recycling. Much like car batteries and tires, when you buy any new electronics now you will be paying for the recycling at the time of purchase. According to this 36% of people replace their TV’s within ten years, just think how many televisions will be saved from the dump in one generation alone! For more information check out the Recycling Council of BC’s website here. |
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