A disposal crisis might just be what Ontario needs to get real about the 3Rs

by Jay Arthur

There has been a lot of talk lately about the US border closing and what a mess Ontario would all be in if this were to happen.
Industry, haulers and more recently the Association of Municipalities of Ontario have been castigating the Province for its lack of a Plan B. The City of Toronto has had the same fate. First it was castigated for not having a Plan B and then it was castigated for not saying what it was if it did have one.
We know there is a consultant's report out there somewhere that shows where intermediate landfilling might take place. But given that anyone's Plan B would involve disposal somewhere in Ontario (albeit in the ground or up in the air) the odds are that people will not be made happy by such a plan once its contents are known. Actually, I should qualify that. The private landfill owners seeking expansions, the Lafarge folks and other would-be burners of waste will be delighted. And no doubt shares in Adams Mine would surge, too.
First though, let's be clear about what the mess is that we're in and then go back a few years and see how we got into it in the first place.
The mess is lack of approved disposal space; the cause is currently under a cloud because of his unseemly comments 11 years ago when the natives were becoming restless at a certain provincial park. Yes, that guy.
Flash back to the early 1990s. There was a lack of disposal space then, too. Government-sponsored waste management master plans were being put together all over the province, with the biggest of them all being undertaken in the Greater Toronto Area. It was a difficult business--no one wants landfill or an incinerator in their backyard. Concerns about pollution, noise and traffic brought out hundreds to public meetings across Ontario and the structure of the legislation meant it was a slow and painful process.
At the same time the good old market place pressures that increase price as supply dwindles prompted the establishment of an increasing number of waste diversion initiatives. All of a sudden it was cheaper to send that cardboard for recycling

rather than send it to the dump. Doing the right thing was good business. New industries flourished and people began to take those 3Rs messages a bit more seriously than before.
The communities faced with the prospect of a landfill, backed by strict legislation, insisted on proper environmental safeguards and sincere efforts to reduce the waste coming into those sites.
Then in 1995, one of the whiz kids in the backrooms of the Tory election campaign team said let's tell those 905 area code folks in the GTA that we are going to drop the whole thing. It worked, too.
A few months later the Interim Waste Authority was dead, US landfill owners came a-callin' and long-term deals were signed with landfills outside of the province. The tipping fees at the existing landfills were steadily decreased (that darned market place again) and doing the right thing became unprofitable.
Recycling stalled and fields of prime farm land that had been possible sites for landfilling were paved over for big box power centres. And even though this meant way more traffic and noise than a landfill would ever see, glaring, wasteful floodlights and certainly lots of air pollution, the approval process was very straight-forward and apparently no one complained.
Fast forward to the 21st century and people are getting restless in Michigan. Given that the "super landfills" are offering great dumping deals to Canadian cities and industries, you can imagine how much is spent on keeping the neighbours happy.
This restlessness has progressed to the point where there could well be federal US legislation closing that border to our garbage.
Good thing, too.
Because maybe a crisis is what is needed here to force us to get serious about reducing waste rather than paying lip service to the idea.
       And maybe someone will point out that any program that only gets back half of what it is supposed to collect can hardly be considered a success, no matter how much feel-good propaganda is plastered in our newspapers--even "in-kind" propaganda.