Behind the Headlines

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We've come a long way on the environment. Without a doubt Toronto still has pollution issues such as smog days and beach closures. But overall our city has a strong record and sets standards.

In order to see benefits in our quality of life, we will need to continue to make fundamental choices, based on a clear vision of what we want for our future. Not the least of our challenges will be to recognize the decision points, particularly when rules and technology keep changing, and we are influenced by emotion, ideology and economics.

A good example of the forces at work can been seen by looking at recent changes in waste diversion. First the good news: our current level of diversion places us in the top rank in North America, and on par with environmentally conscious cities in Europe. But the easy moves have been made. If we strive for higher levels of diversion, we will need to make substantially greater levels of investment and personal commitment.

Confusingly, our provincial government has recently sent out opposite signals. The first was to allow municipalities to bypass full environmental assessments for certain types of thermal waste projects. In a contradictory move, the provincial government allowed a 20-year expansion for a landfill in the Niagara region. At this stage it's not clear if these different decisions were even part of a coherent strategy, or perhaps they were simply measures to reduce disposal costs.

Figuring out a long-term direction in solid waste policy is important because of the size of investment, the long duration of waste processing projects, and the potential impact on our lives.

Just looking at the statistics, there is broad support for waste diversion in Toronto. First we reduce, reuse and recycle. Then we compost and separate. What's left gets landfilled. According to the pollsters, Torontonians are prepared to consider new technologies, including thermal options, to minimize landfilling.

At current rates of use, there is about 20 years' capacity at the Green Lane landfill. The decisions just made at Queen's Park may ease Toronto's ability to invest in gasification so that this landfill could last for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, if we don't move to higher levels of diversion we will be looking for a new place to bury our garbage in 20 years.

Having a firm direction from the regulators at Queen's Park would be useful to support the city's environmental plan. Since landfilling is cheap, easy and evil, senior levels of government usually set rules to encourage municipalities to exhaust other waste reduction options first.

But given that the Province is willing to approve large landfills, why invest in sophisticated sorting equipment that will divert waste at a cost up to $140 per tonne? Why go through the controversy of thermal options when the lowest real cost will be $150 per tonne? Instead, why not continue landfilling at bargain rates?

The answer is that if the City does make appropriate investments, we may not need another landfill in living memory.

Torontonians who thought that simple purchase of the Green Lane landfill eliminated the discussion on solid waste may be mistaken. By starting the discussion now on how much we are willing to invest to minimize waste getting to our landfill, we may be solving the problem for a generation.