Waste Management in Ottawa

[rocketphish]

Plasco site to be decommissioned by end of year

Matthew Pearson, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: September 24, 2015 | Last Updated: September 24, 2015 7:04 PM EDT

Plasco Energy’s waste-to-energy demonstration facility is set to be fully decommissioned by the end of this year, city clerk and solicitor Rick O’Connor advised Mayor Jim Watson and councillors Thursday.

In a memo, O’Connor said Plasco was in a Toronto commercial court to ask for a further extension of its bankruptcy stay in order to give the Ottawa company time to complete decommissioning work currently underway at the Trail Road site. The court granted an extension until Dec. 18.

Plasco, in support of its extension request, was required to prove it has enough cash to complete decommissioning and other operations to the end of the stay period. In order to avoid a projected shortfall of approximately $300,000, Plasco made a request to each of the City of Ottawa and the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change for the partial release of their respective decommissioning security funds, O’Connor’s memo says.

In response, the city has made an agreement to draw on its decommissioning security, which Plasco provided under its lease, to fund soil remediation costs totalling approximately $35,000, while the province has agreed to provide $277,000. This leaves the city with $265,000 as security for completion of decommissioning.

The memo says “significant decommissioning work” has already been done. Decommissioning and remediation of the demonstration facility site is set to be completed by Plasco and its contractors by the end of 2015, at which time the remainder of the city’s decommissioning security would be returned to Plasco.

The once promising waste-to-energy company built a “demonstration facility” a decade ago on city-owned land across the street from Ottawa’s main landfill on Trail Road, and entered into a long-term agreement with the city to process waste in late 2011.

But Plasco was unable to secure financing for its commercial plant by the end of 2014, missing its third and final deadline under the 20-year contract that would have paid Plasco $9.1 million a year to take up to 300 tonnes of garbage a day. It filed under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act in February of this year and laid off 80 local employees.

In August, Plasco sold its remaining physical equipment to Maynards Industries, a global specialist in liquidating assets, for about US$487,0000. The items were scheduled to be sold off to the highest bidder in an auction on Tuesday, Aug. 25.

mpearson@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/mpearson

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...by-end-of-year

[rocketphish]

So the Swiss have had mandated nationwide solid waste incineration for the past 15 years. Why couldn't Rod Bryden figure it out here?

http://www.bafu.admin.ch/abfall/01495/01496/?lang=en
http://www.s-ge.com/en/filefield-pri...,d.cWw&cad=rja

[rocketphish]

Note to City of Ottawa: Stay far, far away from this guy...

Rod Bryden buys back Plasco from creditors for $1

Vito Pilieci, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: September 28, 2015 | Last Updated: September 28, 2015 6:18 PM EDT

A firm controlled by Ottawa entrepreneur Rod Bryden, founder of the failed Plasco Energy Group Inc., has bought Plasco, the energy-conversion company that filed for creditor protection earlier this year, for $1.

Bryden’s company, RMB Advisory Services Inc., acquired a reshaped version of Plasco, which no longer carries a majority of its debts or has any ownership of the company’s failed Trail Road test facility, late Friday night.

Under the deal, RMB gets what’s left of Plasco, particularly the firm’s patent and intellectual property, from two secured creditors: North Shore Power Group Inc., a municipally owned electricity utility in the Town of Blind River, and another company called Canadian Water Projects Inc.

Those two creditors invested $40 million before Plasco sought protection under the Canadian Companies and Creditors Arrangement Act. Bryden said an agreement is in place to repay the $40 million, plus four per cent interest, to the secured creditors whenever his firm is in a position to pay those monies back. But said he could make no guarantee that any money will ever be repaid.

Bryden becomes the sole owner of the firm and chief executive of Plasco again. He has hired back seven of the company’s key long-term employees, including former engineering vice-president Marc Bacon, chief scientific officer Andreas Tsangaris and process engineering manager Tom Wagler.

“All of the value created since Plasco’s formation is embodied in the technology, plant design and know-how generated during eight years of operational testing at the Trail Road facility,” Bryden said in a release Monday.

“The result of the last eight months of CCAA protection has been to preserve substantially all of the value created by Plasco, none of which would have been possible without the actions taken by Plasco’s secured creditors, North Shore and CWP (Canadian Water Projects) who stayed with it and kept their eyes on the ball.”

In August it was announced that the company’s remaining physical assets, which comprised its working test facility located at Ottawa’s Trail Road landfill, were sold to a liquidation company for $487,000 U.S. North Shore and Canadian Water Projects split that sum.

They were also awarded a number of patents pertaining to the processes of how Plasco’s energy-to-waste systems work. It’s primarily those patents and processes that have been sold back to Bryden for $1. In return, North Shore and Canadian Water Projects become secured creditors of the new Plasco under Bryden.

Of the $40 million invested, North Shore’s share was $18 million. The utility used a loan from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. to invest in the Ottawa firm. The town, with 3,500 residents and annual tax revenues of less than $8.8 million, had to renegotiate the terms of its loan payback with CMHC when Plasco failed to make its annual loan payment earlier this year.

The debt load for Plasco is a drop in the bucket compared with the amount the company had before it filed for court protection from its creditors. Plasco had attracted more than $400 million in investment since it was founded by Bryden in 2005.

In an interview Bryden said he believes that Plasco’s technology has a bright future. He said that when he was asked to step down as the firm’s CEO in January 2014 by investors, the firm was on track to build a full-scale commercial facility. He believes something went wrong after that point.

“The question is, is this a car that’s stalled on the side of the road because it ran out of gas? Or, did someone run away with the engine?” he said. “When I left, I did not expect to come back. I certainly did not have a plan to return. But I, like many others, were surprised by the decision to not build the Ottawa plant and to file for CCAA (court protection from creditors).”

Bryden said that while he doesn’t expect the City of Ottawa to pick right up where it last left off in its commercial agreement with Plasco, he would still like to speak to key city politicians and staff in the weeks ahead.

“I certainly hope to have a good relationship with the City of Ottawa,” said Bryden. “But, we’re not asking the city to dust off that commercial contract or to otherwise participate with us. The city may well, in the future, decide that it needs something new in addition to its landfill site to handle waste and it might be by that time we are in a position to do something about that. I certainly hope to speak to some of the councillors, the mayor and the city manager, just to say hello.”

vpilieci@ottawacitizen.com

http://ottawacitizen.com/business/lo...-failed-plasco

[rocketphish]

City's legal battle with Orgaworld still festers, committee told

Joanne Laucius, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: October 8, 2015 | Last Updated: October 8, 2015 7:21 PM EDT

The city and Orgaworld remain locked in litigation, Ottawa’s audit committee heard Thursday. And until the legal wrangling is exhausted, it’s unlikely the city will be able to reopen a contract that is costing millions of dollars more than it should.

The legal saga between the city and the organic waste company that manages the green bin program will continue at least into the second quarter of 2016 because an application to appeal is still before the courts, city clerk and solicitor Rick O’Connor told the committee asking about the progress of a series of legal actions.

The contract between the city and Orgaworld has been a controversial one.

In the summer of 2014, a city audit of the Orgaworld contract reported that the contract has an estimated minimum value of $140 million over its 20-year life, including an estimated $7.7 million in “unnecessary payments” between 2010 and 2013 because of unutilized capacity at Orgaworld, and for leaf and yard waste delivered to the Trail Road waste management facility.

Essentially, the city was paying twice to have some waste processed, said the audit. In 2013, for example, the city sent 83,000 tonnes of organic waste to Orgaworld for processing, but the company accepted only 69,000 tonnes. The remaining waste went to Trail Road.

“The audit last year was very clear. We were basically getting hosed on the deal, ” audit committee chairman Allan Hubley told reporters after the committee meeting.

Although the contract said Orgaworld must pick up leaf and yard waste, Orgaworld had disputed that. In July 2014, an arbitrator dismissed a $1.3-million Orgaworld claim against the city and ordered Orgaworld to pay the city’s cost to process yard and leaf waste.

Orgaworld appealed the arbitrator’s decision. After the Court of Appeal denied an appeal, Orgaword alleged the arbitration process is flawed.

Being in legal limbo means that the city won’t be able to reopen the contract. Hubley said he is outraged by the perpetual litigation and concerned that taxpayers are continuing to pay for “imaginary capacity.”

The 2014 audit found that an additional $12.6 million will be paid out unnecessarily between 2010 and 2029. If the city cancelled and re-tendered the current requirements, it could offer a further potential savings of $30.7 million over the life of the contract, although these savings would be reduced by any costs attached to cancelling the existing contract.

Hubley said there have been opportunities to renegotiate the contract so Orgaworld can continue to do business. He vowed to continue to bring up the matter every month at audit committee.

“We’re paying for imaginary tonnage,” he said.

jlaucius@ottawacitizen.com

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...committee-told

[rocketphish]

Plasco to file another extension of bankruptcy stay

Joanne Laucius, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: December 11, 2015 | Last Updated: December 11, 2015 9:10 PM EST

The failed waste-to-energy company Plasco Energy is expected back in court next week seeking an extension of its protection from creditors so it can “wind up its affairs,” city solicitor Rick O’Connor says in an update memo to Mayor Jim Watson and the members of council.

An extension granted in September is due to expire on Dec. 18. However, Plasco’s demonstration facility on city-owned land across from the Trail Road dump is still on track to be fully decommissioned by the end of the year, says the memo. SNC Lavalin was on the site this week to locate and mark underground utilities and started to excavate soil for remediation.

Plasco entered into a long-term agreement with the city to process waste in 2011, but was unable to secure financing for a commercial plant by the end of 2014, missing a third and final deadline. Last February, Plasco filed under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.

About $95,000 from $300,000 funds held by the city and earmarked for decommissioning the Plasco plant has been released so soil remediation can begin.

Soil remediation is the last component of decommissioning. The city will retain about $200,000 of the security — which Plasco provided under its lease — to ensure all obligations to the city are fulfilled. Plasco will get the rest of the money after the city verifies that contractors have been paid and there are no liens registered against the property.

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...ankruptcy-stay

[rocketphish]

City awaits new provincial law before hunting replacement for Plasco

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: March 1, 2016 | Last Updated: March 1, 2016 6:44 PM EST

There’s no urgency at city hall to find another garbage-processing technology a year after council torched a tentative deal with Plasco Energy Group because it’s waiting to see how the province will refresh waste management laws.

A three-phase municipal waste plan was in the works, and council signed off on the first phase in November 2011, but work on the other two phases has been delayed. Plasco, whose technology was supposed to superheat municipal trash down to a reusable rock-like material, was a major wild card that could have altered the city’s waste diversion strategy. Plasco ran a test facility in Ottawa but couldn’t pay for a full commercial facility. The local company filed for creditor protection in February 2015, the same month council voted to cancel the deal.

Meanwhile, the province just finished accepting comments on a proposed Waste Free Ontario Act, which attempts to reduce garbage, particularly in product packaging.

According to the city’s solid waste services manager Marilyn Journeaux, “staff will only begin to consider residual management options, which could include things such as alternative technologies and/or a new landfill, once the Act is finalized.”

The city’s dump on Trail Road has about 27 years of capacity left, based on figures staff provided council last year, so there isn’t a sense of desperation. But at some point the city will need a long-term strategy to either process non-recyclable trash or pursue an almost impossible endeavour: Find land for a new dump.

A council-endorsed goal is to make sure the existing dump still has room for trash in 2042.

Capital Coun. David Chernushenko, the chair of the environment committee, said the city needs to wait for the provincial rules before developing its own waste management plan. There’s no rush to pursue new technology since the garbage-processing methods haven’t changed, he said.

“No magic elixir or silver bullet has appeared in the past year,” Chernushenko said.

However, Kanata South Coun. Allan Hubley said he’s “shocked” staff aren’t moving quicker to find a suitable technology to process municipal waste after the failed Plasco experiment.

“What I’m trying to get people thinking about is, garbage could be a revenue stream,” Hubley said, touching on the waste-to-energy capabilities of several technologies in the market. The Plasco method, for example, used garbage as fuel to run electricity generators.

Hubley has been big on exploring garbage incineration, although Chernushenko pointed out the high cost and onerous approval process associated with a mass burn facility.

“Just because something is hard to do, it’s not an excuse not to do it,” Hubley said. “This is going to take hard work. We have to be focused on it.”

For now, the city is directing its efforts on reducing waste and increasing recycling, including wider use of the green bin. The city is also reviewing the organics program.

Ottawa managed to divert 51 per cent of curbside residential garbage from the dump in 2015. The diversion rate dropped to 45 per cent when it included high-density buildings, like apartments.

jwilling@postmedia.com
twitter.com/JonathanWilling

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...ent-for-plasco

[rocketphish]

Councillor worries dump is getting buried

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: December 2, 2016 | Last Updated: December 2, 2016 5:20 PM EST

When council scrapped a tentative agreement with Plasco Energy Group last year, it dashed the city’s hope of finding a long-term solution to managing residential trash. Of course, council had little choice since Plasco couldn’t secure financial backing at the time.

Today, the city doesn’t see any urgency to searching for an alternative.

That worries one councillor.

Rideau-Goulbourn Coun. Scott Moffatt fears council won’t talk about the Trail Road dump for the rest of the term, which ends in November 2018. He voiced his concerns during a meeting of the environment and climate change committee this week.

Kevin Wylie, the general manager of public works and environmental services, said the city remains in a holding pattern while the province develops new waste regulations.

“It’s something we’ve got some time. I don’t think we have to start working on it right away,” Wylie said.

The useful life of the Trail Road landfill, which is the city’s main dump for curbside trash, is scheduled to end in 2044, but the timeline largely depends on how much garbage the city is able to divert from the dump. The green bin program, for example, is sending slop to the Orgaworld plant instead. Eight hazardous waste drop-off events this year have diverted another 600 tonnes of material that, really, shouldn’t go into the municipal dump anyway.

There are a few waste-to-energy technologies on the market. For example, there’s going to be a trash-to-biofuels plant in Edmonton. The Plasco “plasmafication” technology superheats trash to power electricity generators.

Moffatt doesn’t want the City of Ottawa to drag its heels looking for a dump alternative, since there’s probably no way the city would ever find a replacement landfill site.

“We still need to be innovative and innovation takes time,” Moffatt said.

jwilling@postmedia.com
twitter.com/JonathanWilling

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...getting-buried

[rocketphish]

Energy Ottawa celebrates gas-to-energy milestone at Trail Road landfill
Renewable energy facility captures large volumes of methane gas – the equivalent of taking 330,000 passenger vehicles off the road

OBJ Sponsored Content
Published: Oct 4, 2017 10:32pm EDT



At the Trail Road landfill in south Ottawa, one resident’s trash becomes another person’s energy.

2017 marks the 10-year anniversary of the site’s landfill gas-to-energy plant, which generates enough electricity to power 6,000 homes each year.

As waste decomposes it creates methane, a greenhouse gas that is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. At many other waste facilities, this gas is flared – burned off – which releases emissions into the atmosphere. In contrast, methane is collected and converted to clean, renewable energy at Trail Road.

“Why not do something productive with the gas, like generating electricity?” asks Greg Clarke, the Chief Energy Generation Officer at Energy Ottawa.

In the decade since its inception, the Trail Road landfill gas-to-energy facility has successfully converted the equivalent of 1.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into renewable energy. Mr. Clarke explains that the overall impact so far has been the same as 330,000 passenger vehicles off the road or of 1.5 million acres of forest purifying the air over the course of a year.

“It’s a significant amount of reductions,” says Mr. Clarke.

The Trail Road landfill gas-toenergy facility, which sits on City of Ottawa land, was developed and is owned by PowerTrail Inc., an Ontario-based partnership between Energy Ottawa and Integrated Gas Recovery Services (IGRS) a landfill gas utilization company. All three organizations work together to ensure operations run smoothly at the busy site, which is connected to the Fallowfield Distribution Station by 3.2 kilometre of overhead pole lines and 170 metres of underground cable.

“There’s a lot of cooperation back and forth,” says Mr. Clarke.

PowerTrail is responsible for maintaining and operating the landfill gas collection system which ultimately leads to $250,000 in savings for the city each year. Additionally, the partnership pays a royalty fee to the city for the rights to the landfill gas. In the 10 years it’s been operational, this arrangement has earned Ottawa approximately $1.5 million.

At the time the Trail Road plant was established in early 2007, there were few of its kind in Canada. While landfill gas-to-energy facilities are now more common across the country, PowerTrail’s leadership in the field is allowing it to expand its operations.

In 2013, a smaller plant was constructed at a landfill in Moose Creek, about an hour southeast of Ottawa. This facility produces enough electricity to power 4,000 homes each year and prevents some 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases from being released into the atmosphere.

Back at Trail Road, a sixth engine was added to the Trail Road facility in 2012 to increase its output, and in turn its environmental impact. According to Mr. Clarke, there are plans to add a seventh in the coming years.

• Video Link

http://www.obj.ca/index.php/article/...-road-landfill

[Davis137]

On a completely different tangent, what is the household garbage, compost and recycling like in the city these days? I lived there 5 years ago, and it was pretty decent, and have since lived in Kingston (but moving back to Ottawa, likely permanently in 2 weeks from now). Kingston, is one of the strictest places I have ever lived WRT garbage and all that lot.

Here are examples of how/why (as viewed by a person with a 6-person household):

1. Sometimes items that should be recyclable, have to be taken to a recycling sorting facility in town (by the home owner, and you can't even get in without your vehicle being weighed and then they count or inspect what you have). I have encountered that sometimes they won't take the items back (I had some plastic items and aluminum that were too big to fit in the blue box). They gave me no explanation as to why they wouldn't take it back, so I went home, smashed the items into pieces, and put them in the trash.

2. Also, regardless of how many occupants your home has, there is a limit of the number of bags of garbage you are allowed to put out (which I can somewhat understand). There is an expectation that my family of 6 should put the same mount of trash at the curb as people without kids, or are single. You can (at the owners expense), purchase garbage bag tags for surplus bags. I have bought a really big garbage can with an "Animal Stopper" lid, and I sometimes make 3-5 bags fit in the can as a sort of work-around for this.

3. The compost bin can't have some items put in it, and then it can't weigh too much, and items can't stick out of it at all or they won't empty it (same applies to yard waste bags). You also can only put yard waste and/or organics out the curb 2x per year, and the rest of the time you have to take the rest to a brush dump near the recycling center. This sucked last fall, as the trees hadn't finished (had only started dropping leaves) when the pickup time was scheduled for.

4. The blue box and grey bins are often rifled through, and sorted by the truck drivers, and a bunch gets left behind (even though the items bear the recycling emblem for their material class/type).

As I said, pretty damned strict, as you can put out almost whatever you want to the curb in parts of southern Ontario (provided it's not filthy and a giant mess). I also recall when I lived down in the South Keys area, the waste management people would take whatever I put to the curb too (provided it was sorted), and it was less hassle overall. Does anyone know if Ottawa has as stringent rules/bylaws on waste as Kingston does?

I am mentioning all of this, as I will be moving to the Riverside Park Neighborhood in a less than a month from now, and will obviously have a LOT of recycling and garbage from after my move is completed.

[acottawa]

They're pretty lenient. Green bins should only contain approved content (they won't check, but the compost is worthless if people don't follow the rules). I don't think there are limits on quantity and they pick up a wide range of things. If you put anything big out you could try to do it early the day before so the scavengers have a crack at it. Ottawa does hazardous waste collection depots in the warmer months, so things like electronics, batteries, CFL bulbs, chemicals, paint, etc should go there.

Remember garbage is biweekly and recycling alternates between black bins (cardboard, etc) and blue bins. Green bins are collected every week.

[J.OT13]

I'm looking for a scrapyard to get rid of an old hood fan, metal shovel and possibly other stuff? Not trying to make money, I just want the stuff to be recycled.

[J.OT13]

I believe in restrictions in terms of bi-weekly garbage bags we're allowed to put on the curb however, it should be based on the number of people in the household.

My girlfriend and I only produce one garbage bag a month. Everything else goes in the compost or recycling. When I see my neighbors, especially in winter, with three garbage bags bi-weekly, barely anything int he recycling and no green-bin, it drives me nuts.

[Catenary]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

I'm looking for a scrapyard to get rid of an old hood fan, metal shovel and possibly other stuff? Not trying to make money, I just want the stuff to be recycled.

I took a stove to Palmer recycling, at the very North end of Albion Road south, just off Johnston next to the railyard. Small operation, but we got some cash for the stove.

[Buggys]

I believe there's a max 6 items of garbage per house, each of which has a weight limit.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Catenary

I took a stove to Palmer recycling, at the very North end of Albion Road south, just off Johnston next to the railyard. Small operation, but we got some cash for the stove.

Thanks! I'll check them out.

[rocketphish]

Proposed contract changes would allow dog waste, plastic bags in green bin

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: March 19, 2018 | Last Updated: March 19, 2018 10:27 PM EDT



Dog waste and plastic bags would be allowed in green bins by mid-2019 under a proposed alteration to city’s contract with Orgaworld, while stopping taxpayer money from being thrown away under the deal.

The city reveals the proposal in a lengthy report to council published Monday night, raising the possibility of finally ending years of disputes with the company and potentially making the green bin a more popular choice for families who have turned their noses to recycling organic waste.

“The negotiations concluded in December 2017, and have resulted in a recommended amended Orgaworld contract that will, for the remaining 12 years of the contract, provide better value to the city than the status quo,” the report says.

Accepting dog waste and plastic bags would cost the city another $626,000 annually, the report says. The number could change each year depending on inflation and the city’s growth. The city says the average household would pay 15 cents extra per month. It would be better than the current terms of the contract, which say the cost would be $3.5 million annually for dog waste and plastic bags, the report says.

Allowing plastic bags in the green bin has been seen as the difference-maker in getting more households to separate their organics from the regular garbage. The city has heard that people are grossed out by keeping food scraps in a paper bag or newspapers. Under the proposed changes, households won’t have to buy special bags for the bins; they can just use a plastic bag.

The rejigged agreement would keep the city as the Orgaworld plant’s primary customer and avoid having the company accept out-of-city residential waste, including diapers and sanitary waste.

Green bin pickup started in 2010 under a 20-year contract with Orgaworld. The city also transitioned to biweekly garbage pickup, but it kept alternating pickup weeks between the black bin and blue bin. According to the city, the scheme has saved about $10 million since 2012.

The city and Orgaworld have had an acrimonious relationship. Legal disputes continue to his day. One of the longest-standing disagreements has to do with whether or not Orgaworld should accept leaf and yard waste.

A scathing audit of the green bin program released in 2014 revealed that an annual 80,000-tonne “put-or-pay” requirement under the contract was unrealistic. The proposed new agreement would eliminate payments to Orgaworld for capacity not used by the city and drop the put-or-pay weight to 75,000 tonnes, avoiding $2.7 million in throwaway costs.

While the auditor general suggested the city consider cancelling the green bin contract, the city believes it would only cost taxpayers more money and tie them up in more litigation. It wouldn’t stop Orgaworld from continuing to operate by taking organic waste from other municipalities, the city says.

The proposed new deal would end all legal disputes.

According to the report, Orgaworld would spend $9.4 million on upgrades to its plant, including $4 million for better odour control and processing measures.

Since dog waste could be accepted in green bins, the city is considering a pilot program that would put green bins in dog parks.

Compostable plastic packages, such as coffee pods, still wouldn’t be allowed in the green bin.

“An improved, more convenient waste-collection service, and better value for money, are significant benefits of the proposed revised contract with Orgaworld,” Mayor Jim Watson said in a written statement. “I am pleased that the city is recommending in this report an improved approach to organics diversion, making it easier for residents to keep this material out of our landfills and ending an ongoing legal conflict with our contractor.”

The city is aiming to sign the new contract with Orgaworld by May 1.

Council’s environment committee will consider the contract changes during a meeting next Monday. Council will then be asked to ratify the committee’s decision two days later.

jwilling@postmedia.com
twitter.com/JonathanWilling

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...s-in-green-bin

[rocketphish]

Unclear costs for cancelling green bin contract prompted city to pursue better deal: memo

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: March 20, 2018 | Last Updated: March 20, 2018 6:46 PM EDT

Severe ambiguity in the green bin contract about how much it would cost taxpayers to cancel the agreement led city staff to recommend a new deal with Orgaworld, a confidential memo suggests.

The memo, sent to council from the legal department this week and seen by this newspaper, says the city can cancel the contract by giving Orgaworld a one-year notice and making a termination payment, but the amount that would be owed to Orgaworld could vary by tens of millions of dollars, depending how the contract is interpreted.

The city simply couldn’t guarantee the cost to taxpayers for cancelling the contract. It looks like it could cost between $8 million and $10 million if the contract was cancelled in 2015, but Orgaworld has suggested it would be between $56 million and $71 million. The contract has a formula and chart that have different termination payments. The chart, which has the higher payments, was actually drafted by a city operational manager at the time and sent to Orgaworld, the memo says.

That revelation baffled an external lawyer from the firm Caza Saikaley hired in 2014 to give the city the straight goods on the legal impacts of cancelling the Orgaworld contract. The external lawyer describes “disturbing facts,” and he even interviewed former city staff in an attempt to get answers, according to his written legal opinion of the matter that’s attached to the confidential memo.



Instead of trying to cancel the Orgaworld contract, the city is recommending a revised deal that would have homeowners pay more for green bin service but would allow plastic bags and dog waste to be put into the bin by mid-2019. The city hopes that having the option to use plastic bags will convince more people to use the green bin. The changes would cost the city an extra $626,000 annually, which means 15 cents more each month for the average homeowner. The 80,000-tonne “put or pay” requirement, which the city has never “put,” would be decreased to 75,000 tonnes.

Coun. David Chernushenko said the proposed deal would produce a “net positive” for taxpayers in the long-term, since more waste would be diverted from the Trail Road dump and the city wouldn’t be making payments to Orgaworld for capacity it can’t fill at the processing facility on Hawthorne Road.

The prospect of more legal wrangling with Orgaworld over a cancelled contract is also unappealing for the city.

Arbitration over leaf and yard waste was originally scheduled to happen over two to three weeks, but it ended up lasting 72 days at a cost to taxpayers of $2.2 million, plus another $100,000 tied to the subsequent appeals. Orgaworld’s appeal is still active.

The city has an outstanding dispute regarding the size of the Orgaworld plant, which is contracted to have a capacity of 100,000 tonnes per year. The city claims the company didn’t build a facility that big, impacting the quality of compost and the company’s ability to accept peak-period volumes of organics. If the city wins that dispute, it might be able to cancel the contract without paying Orgaworld another nickel. The problem is, the city could pay between $500,000 and $1 million to fight Orgaworld in another bitter round of arbitration, and even that estimate could be low, judging by what happened with the leaf and yard waste arbitration.

Cancelling the contract was one option after a scathing 2014 audit of the green bin program. The city could also find another organics processor or build its own organics processing plant. Scrapping the organics recycling program entirely could be pointless if the province tightens waste rules and bans organics from landfills by 2022.

Orgaworld and the city signed the contract in March 2008. The 20-year agreement started April 1, 2010 and it ends March 31, 2030.

The city is still trying to get thousands of homeowners to embrace the green bin program. About 51 per cent of residents use the green bin, according to the city. The “yuck factor” of dumping kitchen slop into a container or paper bag is apparently too gross for others to handle, going by what city staff have learned while running the organics program. Letting residents use plastic bags for organics could be a difference-maker. The plastics would be stripped out of the organics stream and sent to the municipal dump.

Duncan Bury of Waste Watch Ottawa is skeptical of allowing non-compostable plastic bags to be mixed with the organic waste.

“That’s a bit of a surprise, and frankly, a step backward,” Bury said, calling the move an “over-reaction to the yuck factor.”

Bury said he’s not convinced that allowing plastic bags will be a tipping point for more homeowners to use their green bins. He also worries about Orgaworld’s ability to keep up with the amount of plastics that will come through the door.

“The danger is Orgaworld gets stuck with residual plastic they can’t handle or separate and it degrades the quality of the compost,” Bury said.

The proposed changes still wouldn’t allow diapers, sanitary products and coffee pods to be disposed in the green bin.

Chernushenko believes that allowing plastic bags in the green bin would attract more people to organics recycling, even those who live in multi-unit buildings.

“Is it perfect? It’s just a big step forward,” Chernushenko said.

Orgaworld Canada GM Michael Leopold said the company is waiting until after city council considers the proposal to comment.

The environment committee will consider the staff-recommended deal Monday before sending it to council for a decision on March 28.


Annual organics sent to Orgaworld by the City of Ottawa since the green bin program was implemented in 2010

2010: 53,349 tonnes
2011: 55,063 tonnes
2012: 55,423 tonnes
2013*: 69,403 tonnes
2014: 75,076 tonnes
2015: 76,396 tonnes
2016: 70,918 tonnes
2017: 77,461 tonnes

* First full year of biweekly garbage collection


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City could be encouraged to divert diapers from dump, but continues ban for green bin

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: March 21, 2018 | Last Updated: March 21, 2018 6:28 PM EDT

The city doesn’t want dirty diapers in its green bin program, but in a few years it might not have a choice.

The city is in the midst of amending its contract with Orgaworld — the company responsible for handling Ottawa’s compost — and plans on keeping diapers and other sanitary products out of the green bin. But that possibly doesn’t align with provincial plans, with Ontario eying a move to get diapers out of the regular waste stream as early as 2022.

The city says diapers belong in the dump on Trail Road, not in Orgaworld’s composting plant in rural south Ottawa.

For that reason, council next week will vote on a revised contract with Orgaworld that will continue the diaper ban. The new deal, however, would add dog waste and plastic bags as approved items for the green bin. Orgaworld is agreeing to $9.4 million in facility upgrades, including nearly $4 million in work to reduce odours.

The city didn’t have answers about the diaper issue on Wednesday, requesting that questions be asked after an environment committee meeting on Monday.



Orgaworld has regulatory approval to accept diapers, even though the city and the province’s environment ministry opposed the company’s request to add diapers to its waste stream. The Environmental Review Tribunal in November 2011 granted Orgaworld’s request to process sanitary products, human or pet waste, and waste in plastic bags at its composting facility.

The contract between the city and Orgaworld already has a provision to allow dog waste, plastic bags and diapers at a cost of $151 per tonne, compared to the current processing rate of $110.75 per tonne based on an annual 80,000 tonnes of total organic waste. The revised deal going to committee and council recommends a new rate of $126.48, taking into account the dog waste and plastic bags based on an annual 75,000 tonnes of total organic waste.

The province published a proposal last November on a food and organic waste framework. The proposed framework considers banning food and organic waste from disposal sites through a phased-in approach starting in 2022. In the document, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change says the definition of organic waste “can include” diapers.

In a report to council, the city lays out its case against accepting diapers in the green bin. Composting diapers is better suited for an anaerobic processing system, not the aerobic system used at the Orgaworld plant in Ottawa, the city says.

“Ultimately, however, in addition to the odour risk, staff believe diapers and sanitary products belong in a landfill,” the report says. “There is no value including them in the green bin, as the city would pay more for their processing, and the non-compostable parts of the diapers and sanitary products end up in a landfill anyway as residual materials.”

The city seems happy with the current system for diapers. Ottawa residents can ask the city to pick up dirty diapers and incontinence products on weeks when garbage isn’t collected. The city on Wednesday couldn’t provide the annual cost for the program.

Orgaworld has a plant in London, Ont. that processes organic waste from the Toronto area, including diapers. Foul odours coming from the plant have resulted in hefty fines and the company has been recently trying to smooth over relations with the community.

The Orgaworld plant in Ottawa has generated no complaints to the ward councillor’s office in recent years.

“Not even one call,” according to Osgoode Coun. George Darouze, who was elected in 2014. He said he’ll be canvassing his community about the proposal to include dog feces and plastic bags in the organic waste sent to Orgaworld.

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Fight brewing over Ottawa green bins and banned coffee pods

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: March 26, 2018 | Last Updated: March 26, 2018 10:33 AM EDT



A company that produces compostable coffee pods received a rude awakening last week after learning that Ottawa plans to keep banning the pods from city green bins.

“We were furious,” says John Pigott, chief executive officer of Club Coffee.

The city announced last week it has restructured its green-bin contract with Orgaworld to allow plastic bags and dog feces to be included in the organic waste Ottawans send to a plant in rural south Ottawa.

As proposed, the expanded list of items doesn’t include the compostable coffee pods. In a report, city staff expressed concern about the ability of the organics plant to break down the product.

“This is an area that is still in flux with respect to establishing standards for producers of biodegradable and compostable packaging,” the staff report says. “There is not enough reliable testing to determine how such packaging would fare in Orgaworld’s aerobic composting process (early test results indicate that the rings in one type of compostable coffee pod do not break down in sufficient time, for example).”

The city is essentially worried about contaminating the final compost product.

Toronto-based Club Coffee makes biodegradable coffee pods for several brands, including the McDonald’s-owned McCafé, President’s Choice and Ottawa-based Bridgehead. The pods are used in single-serve coffee machines.

Pigott, who is from Ottawa, said his company’s pods have passed a test with Orgaworld.

He said it’s a case of the marketplace moving faster than the government regulators.

“They’re afraid that we’re the first example and there’s no defined rules,” Pigott said, suggesting that the city might be afraid of opening the door to other biodegradable packaging companies asking for a place in the green bin. “We’re telling them we want to work with them to define the rules.”

Pigott said there needs to be a larger discussion with the province about biodegradable packaging. The Ontario government’s proposed food and organic waste framework discusses compostable products and packaging, encouraging municipalities to support innovation in processing organic waste. The proposed framework, which was first published last November, is part of the province’s strategy to recycle more waste and keep trash out of landfills. It considers phasing our organic waste from landfills as early as 2022.

On the city’s end, there could be budget impacts by opening the door to more green bin material. A biodegradable coffee pod, for example, would be moved from the blue box, a program funded jointly by municipalities and product producers, to the green bin. The city pays Orgaworld a per-tonne processing fee for green bin waste and, in fact, the fee will increase under the proposed revised deal because of the addition of plastic bags and dog waste.

Pigott said the company would be willing to pay a fee to offset some of the city’s processing costs, as long as other producers paid, too.

The city would also need to avoid confusing residents about which coffee pods can go in the green bin and which ones can go in the blue box. Club Coffee maintains its biodegradable pods don’t resemble other pods.

The city couldn’t respond to a question about the coffee pod kerfuffle Friday because staff were getting ready for an environment committee meeting on Monday.

Councillors are poised to approve the revised contract with Orgaworld, but Club Coffee wants them to consider measures that would allow its pods to be included in the approved items for the green bin.

Pigott said he believes the city is listening to his company’s case.

Over the past week, Christopher McKillop, a vice-president with Club Coffee, has contacted the chair of the environment committee, David Chernushenko, and the general manager of public works and environmental services, Kevin Wylie, about the coffee pod issue.

Club Coffee just wants recognition by the city that its pods are suitable for the organic stream, McKillop said.

“We just want this to be done in a fair and reasonable way,” he said.

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Garbage costs could rise as city considers short-term contracts while waiting for provincial direction

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: April 10, 2019

Ottawa homeowners are poised to pay more for garbage collection for at least the next three years as city hall waits for the province to set policies which will likely impact municipal trash management.

The City of Ottawa’s garbage collection contracts expire on May 31, 2020, and it has to decide now what it wants to do about new contracts.

Public works staff have laid out their recommendation in a report to council’s environment committee, telling councillors they should sign new three-year contracts with the existing service providers, rather than put the contracts up for competition or inking longer deals that could be cheaper for taxpayers.

The recommendation means the average homeowner would pay about $10 more for garbage collection in each of 2020 and 2021 and about $2.50 more in 2022.

How the city collects trash is partially based on policy directions set by the province, which then helps the city write its own waste management policy. The municipal policy informs the collection contracts, covering how often garbage is collected, what kind of garbage is collected and how much garbage is collected.

However, because of the change in provincial government last year, there’s still uncertainty about the future of waste regulations.

The previous Liberal government made new waste-management and waste-diversion laws, but the diversion targets were vague when it came to residential garbage management and support for recycling programs. The previous government was also looking at new regulations for organic waste with an eye to banning organics in landfills.

The current PC government has presented its waste-management ideas, including a discussion paper released last month, but the city doesn’t know when, or if, the government will make changes to the laws.

As a result, the city fears locking in standard garbage collection contracts for another five, six or seven years when there could be changes at the provincial level. Another risk is the contracts might not allow the city make its own changes to curbside collection based on a refreshed municipal waste management strategy expected this term of council.

There’s some interest at city hall to get more people recycling and using their green bins by using strict measures, such as implementing clear bags so the city can see if people are tossing out recyclable material, or reducing the maximum number of trash bags allowed at the curb.

According to the staff report, when the city went searching for companies interested in three-year contracts, no one was really interested, other than the city’s current contractors.

City staff say it will cost more to collect garbage because salaries and fuel prices have gone up, there are more homes to collect garbage from, there are more maintenance costs and there’s now a carbon tax.

Curbside garbage collection costs the city about $34 million annually between October 2012 and May 2020.

The city and its contractors collect trash from about 291,000 single-family homes and 1,685 multi-residential buildings. The city also collects waste from about 260 municipal facilities and 470 small businesses.

The city in 2011 awarded contracts for the five garbage-collection zones. Waste Management has the west-Ottawa zone and Miller Waste Systems has two zones, both covering south Ottawa. The city’s own internal operations collect trash in the two remaining zones, which are east Ottawa and downtown.

The city’s in-house team won the east-Ottawa zone fair and square in 2011 through a contract competition. However, council didn’t put the downtown zone up for competition that year, instead handing it to the in-house collection team based on sterling work from the in-house team in previous years.

In-house garbage collection has had its benefits and drawbacks over the course of the recent collection timeframe. While the city has full control over collection in those two zones, they haven’t been performing consistently from a financial perspective. The zones have have produced deficits in some of the years, but the city’s largest union has defended keeping the work inside city hall.

Because the in-house team would continue working the two zones under the recommended three-year extension, the city would have to increase its fleet-related budgets by $5.5 million to buy 19 vehicles to replace aging vehicles.

The environment committee will discuss the staff report next Tuesday before making a recommendation to council.

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