What happens to our waste?

BY AMY L. SMITH

NovaNewsNow.com

In the era of going green, most people already know the “why” of reduce, reuse, recycle.

But while the importance of the three Rs seems widely understood, the “how”, “what” and “where” of environmentally friendly is often a different story. That account starts now.

After a meal at a fast food restaurant, we are all faced with the same dilemma; how to sort our waste. Gone are the days when clean-up was one simple motion, off the trays and into the trash.

Some doubt that our efforts are going to good use, harboring the suspicion that the labeled bins are just for show. But this isn’t the case; this sorting, whether we are at home or not, is the first and most important step of a process that turns our trash into big business.

Deciding what trash goes where is getting easier thanks to better bins and labeling, but it can still be confusing. At home, consult the guides on the Valley Waste Resource Management website www.vwrm.com) or your waste management calendar.

Here are some basic rules for on-the-go sorting centre on the cleanliness of the item. If it isn’t clean, it’s garbage, especially when it comes to dairy products.

A Dairy Queen sundae comes in a recyclable cup, but if the cup isn’t rinsed, it’s off to the landfill. Things like pop cans and beverage containers are often clean enough without being rinsed, but only if they are completely empty.

Soiled paper products, including napkins and paper containers, can be put into the organics container as their natural fibres make them compostable. A strategy that Andrew Garrett, Communications Coordinator for VWRM, suggests is sorting your waste before it leaves the table.

Foreign materials contaminate

It’s a misconception that things put into the wrong containers will be sorted later. When foreign materials are put into a bag of recyclables or organics, that bag is contaminated. While VWRM will allow for a bit of contamination, often bags coming from public containers have extremely high levels and are taken straight to the landfill.

It’s important to remember that those processing your waste are harvesting it for profit, and hiring extra workers to sort what should be sorted already is an expense.

When the bags are full, your trash goes from its roost in-restaurant to larger dumpsters. All establishments are required by law to provide customers with separate bins for sorting, but separate dumpsters are sure signs that a business’s green practices aren’t just for show. Most large restaurants hire a commercial hauling company to transport their waste, which is then taken to the facilities in the Kentville Industrial Park.

After the haulers carrying your waste reach the facilities, they hand over all your recyclables - the blue-bagged plastics, metal and paper - to Scotia Recycling. This is a private firm on contract with the municipality. The rest - your half-eaten burger and dirty sundae cup - goes to the Eastern Management Centre. Now the magic of conservation and diversion begins.

All supply and demand

Unrecyclable, inorganic waste is held until it is transported to a landfill near Chester. The items in this category, not including dirty recyclables, are mainly things that can’t be broken down into useable materials. This is changing, however, due to the changing attitudes of buyers.

“More and more things are becoming recyclable every year because markets are opening up to that,” says Garrett. “It’s all supply and demand.”

Fortunately, the demand for compost is high. All organic materials are transported from the Management Centre to Northridge Farms in Dempsey’s Corner, just north of Aylesford. It’s processed and sold for a profit. With this system, 83,000 tons of organic waste has been diverted from landfills.

Similar results have been seen for blue-bagged waste. Because so many different materials are now recyclable, once the waste is received at the Scotia Recycling it must be sorted. Paper products are sorted separately, while the rest of the recyclables are emptied onto a conveyor belt.

All the different types of recyclable materials are separated into large bins underneath the conveyor platform. They are sorted by type, but also by colour. When this is done, each type of paper and recyclable will have its own buyer and destination.

Used paper products are sold to Hantsport companies Minas Basin Pulp and Power and Canadian Key Fibre. Cardboard continues in its same form, but all other paper materials are made into products like egg cartons, paper plates and beverage trays.

Metal, like tin cans and aluminum foil, is baled together and sold in bulk to various buyers to be reused. The same happens to glass, although with fewer uses, glass is often sold at a very low price.

It is sometimes melted down and reformulated into new containers, but often it’s broken into small fragments used in reflective paint and construction. The broken shards let a digging worker know when they are about to reach a buried target.

Plastic bottles, probably the most well known recyclable material, are made of a plastic called Polyethylene terephthalate (PET). They are one of the most versatile and sought after for post-consumer products.

Those not taken straight to an enviro-depot are sorted by Scotia Recycling and sent to the Resource Recovery Fund Board for a refund. From there the bottles are baled into compressed packages and sold. This baling process is one of the reasons why it’s so important for caps to be taken off bottles before they are thrown away.

Caps are too small to sort on the conveyor belt and therefore not recyclable, but more dangerously, if a cap is left on the bottle as it is compressed, it will shoot off, potentially harming workers.

The RRFB’s usual buyer for the plastic is NovaPet, an Amherst company that specializes in working with the plastic. They will cut the bottles into flakes and sell them to manufacturers of everything from polar fleece to packaging.

Many pop bottles have colouring in them, which cannot be removed. This results in darker colours of many products made from PET, which is particularly useful for fibrous materials like textiles, carpeting and fibre fill for stuffed animals or pillows. The best thing about PET is it is useable over and over again.

More uses for other materials

Now all the waste from the fast food restaurant is dealt with and thanks to proper sorting, it will nearly all be used again. RRFB has uses for more than just everyday trash, though. Tires are reused by the manufacturers of rubber carpeting used in stables, tracks for athletic events and also turf fields such as those found in Kentville and at Acadia University. In fact, the Kentville indoor soccer field is comprised of approximately 100,000 tires.

Even paint is now being recycled and resold under the brand name Boomerang. The paint is sold in a variety of shades, costs half as much, and through the manufacturer, Nova Scotia has recycled 268,000 litres of paint.

With this sort of profit-making system, everyone benefits from a green lifestyle. The processors and manufacturers make a profit and we get a cleaner future.

Penalties for improper recycling are getting harsher, but the results confirm that the effort is worth it. Garrett says that due to a larger percentage of waste being recycled, the trucks performing curbside pick-up have had to rearrange their holding areas to allow more room for blue bags and organics, taking space away from garbage bags.

Recycling is no longer the domain of environmentalists; it’s big business and a part of our everyday lives. We still have a long way to go to reduce our waste from the current 456kg/person/year to the goal of 300kg, but understanding the system and how it creates profits, jobs and a cleaner environment for Nova Scotians is an important step on the way.