Calgary recycles

[kw5150]

Pretty sure it would have a pretty big impact. Other cities already re-sell the compost in huge quantities. The compost industry is huge actually. There are a couple big ones around Calgary already that have been establishing over the past few years.

Dont be a debbie downer. The farmers fields are stipped of nutrients as it is. Anything in the step towards compost is a good one. Have you heard of the compost tea soil amendment process?

Originally Posted by freeweed

While I agree with and applaud your sentiment, I'm pretty sure we're not going to be fertilizing farmer's fields with this stuff. At least not in the amounts necessary to replace potash and such.

THAT issue is a much bigger kettle of fish to solve.

[freeweed]

Of course compost is a huge industry, I just think that you'll find more of it ends up in flower beds than on wheat fields.

Getting our agricultural soils back in shape for the long term is going to take a whole different set of ideas. Go look at what they do with stubble in Manitoba if you want to scare yourself sometime

[kw5150]

Yes, things are changing daily as more and more people get sick and tired of, well, being sick and tired. Every step in the right direction (no matter how small) is a good one. We will figure this all out eventually. The old practices of dousing pests and plants in poison are slowly starting lost lose their stronghold.....slooooooowlyyyyyyyyyy.............

At least the compost is going into flower beds I guess.....

Originally Posted by freeweed

Of course compost is a huge industry, I just think that you'll find more of it ends up in flower beds than on wheat fields.

Getting our agricultural soils back in shape for the long term is going to take a whole different set of ideas. Go look at what they do with stubble in Manitoba if you want to scare yourself sometime

[mersar]

Ahem... Calgro... ahem. Granted its not a huge amount but I could see this composting program complimenting it.

[Ciemny]

In Ottawa the contract the city signed with Orgaworld became a very contentious issue since they were not getting nearly as much organic waste as they hoped. The city pays...7 million a year to the company no matter how little the organics bring it by weight. Apparently someone just picked 80000 tons of organic waste/year out of thin air without doing any research.

Desperately the city even had a "media presentation" to show people that you can throw pizza boxes and some yard waste in the bin as well..just to increase the weight.

I hope that they use the same system here for collecting the bins like they do for the black/blue ones. Ottawa usually you had someone do it by hand and on a more then a few occasions I have seen guys getting covered by maggots blown from the bins by the wind or puking in the street cause of the wretched smell of food festering in the summer heat.

[Full Mountain]

Originally Posted by kw5150

Yes, things are changing daily as more and more people get sick and tired of, well, being sick and tired. Every step in the right direction (no matter how small) is a good one. We will figure this all out eventually. The old practices of dousing pests and plants in poison are slowly starting lost lose their stronghold.....slooooooowlyyyyyyyyyy.............

At least the compost is going into flower beds I guess.....

Speaking of education, Wooster posted this video on twitter today
• Video Link

[jawagord]

Like Edmonton's compost, Calgary's recyclables will soon be headed to the Landfill. Hard to believe this recycling is actually good for the environment when you have 3 groups of diesel trucks roaming the city to collect garbage, compost and this low grade recyclable trash, then sort it, truck it to the coast and ship it to China for who knows what they do with it. Keep sorting people, pay no attention to the mountain of trash, the city will bury it in the landfill soon.

http://calgaryherald.com/pmn/news-pm...e-833961bb3359

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmont...lity-1.4381325

[DizzyEdge]

Yeah it's pretty brutal. My impression that of all the trash, it's the compostable stuff that is best to keep out of the landfill due to having to monitor it for decades as it creates methane and other pollutants as it decomposes. Recycling is great, but I don't think burying it causes actual major environmental issues.

One article mentioned some jurisdictions legislate that the manufacturers must take care of recycling the packaging for their products.

[Calgarian]

Is building a recycling centre too simple of a solution?

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

Is building a recycling centre too simple of a solution?

And do what with it? You still need a market for your product.

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

And do what with it? You still need a market for your product.

Sell it to people who make things out of your recycled materials. What do you think China does with the recycled materials?

[jawagord]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

Sell it to people who make things out of your recycled materials. What do you think China does with the recycled materials?

What fairyland are you living in? If there was a market in Canada for this trash it wouldn't have been going to China. Now the Chinese don't even want it, the only real options are burn it, maybe make some power (expensive) or bury it and if we go the latter route then we can bury the blue boxes too, as a monument to huburistic environmentalism.

[Doug]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

Sell it to people who make things out of your recycled materials. What do you think China does with the recycled materials?

Landfill.

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

Sell it to people who make things out of your recycled materials. What do you think China does with the recycled materials?

Honestly, I think they are burning it.

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by jawagord

What fairyland are you living in? If there was a market in Canada for this trash it wouldn't have been going to China. Now the Chinese don't even want it, the only real options are burn it, maybe make some power (expensive) or bury it and if we go the latter route then we can bury the blue boxes too, as a monument to huburistic environmentalism.

So we only manufacture goods from raw materials? do you even know how recycling works? they take the plastic, melt it down, then make new stuff out of it. Same with metal, paper is broken down into pulp, then pressed back into sheets. The reason it goes to china is that's where most of the goods in the world are manufactured, they don't buy our recycling off us to fucking burn it there genius.

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by Doug

Landfill.

lol, you think they are buying it off us just to bury it! that's beyond idiotic, if that was the case, we would be paying them to take it, not the other way.

[O-tacular]

Don't bother Calgarian. The likes of Dog, DoubleDouble and Jabbagord hate everything and anything environmentally friendly and will argue to the death against even trying to improve things.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

So we only manufacture goods from raw materials? do you even know how recycling works? they take the plastic, melt it down, then make new stuff out of it. Same with metal, paper is broken down into pulp, then pressed back into sheets. The reason it goes to china is that's where most of the goods in the world are manufactured, they don't buy our recycling off us to fucking burn it there genius.

Plastic is not good at being recycled due to all the additional chemicals in it, you can't just take one grade of plastic and make it into the same quality product, it usually just gets used to make low grade stuff like furniture filler. It's not very efficient at all hence why we don't do it in this country.

It would not surprise me in the slightest if China was landfilling it anyway, they are not exactly known for their honesty and moral scruples. It's a win-win, we get to pretend we are recycling and China gets money.

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Plastic is not good at being recycled due to all the additional chemicals in it, you can't just take one grade of plastic and make it into the same quality product, it usually just gets used to make low grade stuff like furniture filler. It's not very efficient at all hence why we don't do it in this country.

It would not surprise me in the slightest if China was landfilling it anyway, they are not exactly known for their honesty and moral scruples. It's a win-win, we get to pretend we are recycling and China gets money.

lol, they are buying it off us, well, were buying it off us anyway. Unless they need a shit ton of fill, why would they pay us to bury our garbage?

Whatever, think what you want...

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

lol, they are buying it off us, well, were buying it off us anyway. Unless they need a shit ton of fill, why would they pay us to bury our garbage?

Whatever, think what you want...

K, I'll admit I'm wrong on that one then. From the sounds of things though, this was very marginally economical and relied on cheap labour doing horrible hand picking in China, and now that oil/gas prices are low the incentive to buy recycled plastic is lower. So it probably wouldn't make any sense to build much capacity in Canada.

In reality for plastics landfill probably is the best option.