Around 900 island residents put out food scraps to be collected by Bowen Waste Services, according to Don Marshall, chair of the Solid Waste Resource Management Advisory Committee (SWRMAC) and the committee is taking a close look at the choices of either continue to ship organics off the island or process them here. This topic was part of SWRMAC's progress report presented at the October 22 council meeting by Marshall and SWRMAC committee members Peter Taggart and Dai Roberts.
"The goal of presenting this interim report is to show our conceptual thinking," Marshall said. "We've looked at facilities, we've reviewed documents, researched and have done a lot of brainstorming." Marshall introduced the two basic scenarios: in the first one, all the waste is taken to North Vancouver, the second one envisions the processing of organics on Bowen. "We haven't come up with a favourite one yet," he added. "We want the community to let us know what they think."
Marshall covered the committee's mandate, the current contract with Bowen Waste Services (BWS), challenges, scenarios, options and phases.
"We already implemented the food scraps collection," he said. "The next step is to develop a request for proposals (RFP) for the solid waste contract. In order to do that, we need to develop a solid waste bylaw." Marshall explained that the current contract with BWS originally ran from 2005 to 2010. This contract was extended to 2012.
"The shipments of organics have gone off the top of the charts because food waste has a lot of weight. We are on the path to achieving significant separation of organics from garbage streams," Marshall said. "But we are sending a lot of trucks to the city that don't have a full load. We are looking to see if we can reduce the number of trips to town."
Marshall said that this is one of the reasons that BWS's contract has been extended - the longer time period makes it possible to gather more data as well as consider an on-island composting facility.
As challenges, Marshall listed satisfying regional and provincial legislation, compliance with the OCP, reducing the cost of solid waste management and reducing carbon footprint. "The environmental impact is important to us," he said. "Our goal is to make the system work well for the community and the municipality."
Marshall introduced different scenarios. One option envisions the continuation of shipping everything to the mainland but reducing curb side pick-up for non-organics to bi-weekly while collecting organics once a week. Another option sees an expansion of a Bowen transfer station eliminating waste pick-up by the municipality. "Residents would have the option of taking the waste to the transfer station or pay a contractor for pick-up," Marshall explained, adding that this model is applied in Maple Ridge where residents voted not to have garbage pick-up by the municipality.
Another option is to continue shipping waste but process organics on-island and Marshall said, "We realize that we are a bit behind the edge - this is already done all over North America." Taggart introduced a few models of green waste processing facilities and gave the example of a composting facility in Saanich. "[The organics] get deposited inside a building where the primary composting is done," he explained. "Then it's taken outside and left for one year. The building has an exhaust vent and bio filter and there is no evidence of vermin or smell. As long as things are done properly, there are no issues. The finished product is used for soil amendment."
Marshall sees a composting facility on Bowen as a potential means of lowering the carbon footprint as well as an opportunity for local enterprise. "It fits within the OCP and the BIRD site is already zoned for it," he said. "But at first glance, we found that it's cheaper taking [organics] to town." But he said the numbers could change as tipping fees don't stay the same. Roberts added, "One of the pieces of info we are lacking is a basic carbon footprint analysis." Roberts said that the analysis will influence the economics of all the scenarios and without it, no informed decision can be made.
SWRMAC is on a tight schedule as its mandate comes to a close by the end of 2013. The committee is working hard to meet its goal: zero waste. Marshall added, "We are getting close to seeing the solution to the problem."
