General Infrastructure Discussion
 

To discuss the water, power, garbage, recycling issues.

http://www.straight.com/article-3325...ts-fired-fight

What should we do with our garbage issues?

That issue came up a little while ago too.

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ht=incinerator

is vancouver the only city in the region to have compost collection?

Actually it was one of the last to get it...

Looks like Surrey collects yard waste but not food waste such as peels etc.

http://www.surrey.ca/Living+in+Surre...on+Program.htm

Looks like Surrey collects yard waste but not food waste such as peels etc.

http://www.surrey.ca/Living+in+Surre...on+Program.htm

I think we should make failing to recycle a crime, either at the consumer end or the collection end.

We can do like what some areas of Ontario do, where instead of putting trash in solid black trash bins, all trash needs to be in clear bags. Then the garbage man can leave behind trash he thinks contains recyclables and a bylaw officer can come by and issue a citation. Right now, in Vancouver, all you do is put all your trash in those giant black bins, and who cares. That's why there is so much waste here, government encourages it by giving large trash bins, small blue boxes and horribly awkward bags for paper, and then only collecting recycling every 2 weeks. Only recently, in some areas, have we made recycling better by allowing people to mix their recyclables. Most people are too lazy to sort through their own recycling, and then remember which week is the week to put it out. There is no incentive to recycle besides a clear conscience, its a lot of work with zero reward for success or punishment for failure.

The alternative is that waste collectors should sort the waste themselves. Other jurisdictions do this, where they have large facilities where they sort the garbage collected by trucks, piece by piece. Instead of having homeless run around downtown picking cans out of the trash, give them jobs in sorting plants. Remove the deposit from recyclables, and have the cities collect on the materials they gather. It can be cost and resource intensive, but can be covered as people would be willing to pay more to know that they don't have to worry about recycling anymore.

I currently live in a condo building, and recently Surrey switched to allowing mixed recycling. All recycling goes into the same container. It used to be the dumpster would be overflowing and the sorted recycling would be somewhat full (usually only with non flattened boxes). Now, every week, the 6 recycling bins are jam packed with containers, plastics, boxes and metals; and the dumpster only about half full. The building could easily fill 2 dumpsters with recycling for every garbage dumpster, and that's only been happening in the last few months. All because it's that much easier to do.

Why Vancouver still makes you sort recycling is beyond me.

It's pretty sad that people can't be bothered to drop plastics into one bag and cans into another... :(

they don't do it in coquitlam that i know of

and I mean food waste - like vegetable peelings, apple cores etc.

not lawn waste - which has been around for years

I thought Coquitlam started it earlier this year...?

Richmond started compost pickup in February.
Langley was the first to start compost pickup.
Port Moody started late last year.
PoCo has it too.
New West is starting sometime this year (maybe already started, not sure)..
West Van is starting in 2011.
North Van has not yet found a facility to start it.
Burnaby, Surrey, Delta don't seem to be acting on this yet.

maybe at houses - i live in an apartment and have nowhere to take it

i can take my recyclables to a depot - why not my mounds of food waste

Apartments get private garbage pickup, shouldn't they be responsible to arrange private compost pickup?

actually surrey is working on a food waste program

Umm wrong, Burnaby started their food waste program in June. My family has cut down on half of our garbage container waste every week.

http://www.city.burnaby.bc.ca/cityha...Recycling.html

^ Good news about Burnaby, thanks. They don't call it "compost pickup" so it didn't come up on my google search. :) Instead I got some other city page (apparently out of date) that said they only collect yard trimmings.

Metro Vancouver municipal politicians were expected to vote Friday afternoon on a sweeping new plan to deal with the region's garbage that could include building a large incinerator.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-col...cinerator.html

http://www.vancouversun.com/technolo...559/story.html

1,200,000 tonnes of garbage can't be recycled each year/365 days per year / 30 tonne trucks = 110 trucks of waste per day approx right now end up at the incinerator in Burnaby (20%) or at Cache Creek.

From the Burnaby NewsLeader.

Hmm... isn't that hinting at a possible waste to energy plant placement in either Downtown Vancouver, Central Surrey, or Olympic Village? All three places I think have a variety of businesses / residences that use or will use steam in the future, so sales and revenue from steam production will be more sustainable as a result... The only problem of course is overcoming the sometimes insane opposition to these new plants...

I think Coquitlam (Pacific Reach area?) is in the running - and there's a planned residential community at the foot of King Edward.