In Canada, garbage would seem to be the talk of the town these days.
In Winnipeg, for example, city council recently passed a plan to encourage more recycling but stopped short of approving the mayor’s proposal for a two bag limit per household per week and a charge of $1.50 per bag above that to give people more incentive to recycle.
The city (pop. 650,000) currently has a blue box program and the province of Manitoba (of which Winnipeg is the capital city) collects a two cent environmental levy on every beverage container sold in the province to help pay for municipal recycling programs around the province.
PROVINCIAL MANEUVERS
In Toronto, Canada’s largest city, city councilors are also talking garbage, reports John Hanson, who heads the Recycling Council of Ontario.
“It’s a rather painful process,” Hanson says. “Toronto City councilors have embraced a lofty waste reduction program. The green plan envisions zero waste by 2010. Staff people at city hall are aiming for an 80% reduction.”
Hanson reports that an umbrella group of stakeholders working under the title of Waste Diversion Organization (WDO) recommended to the Government of Ontario last September that there should be a 50-50 cost sharing arrangement between industry and municipalities with regard to recycling and waste reduction. He is hopeful that legislation will be introduced and will offer some regulation specifying the recommendation to be in place by the fall.
The WDO study pointed out that to attain a waste reduction target of 50%, one million more metric tons of organic waste has to be diverted from the waste stream in addition to the 700,000 metric tons presently being culled.
To help achieve waste reduction goals, Hanson says, a new 20,000 metric tons capacity mixed composting facility is being built just north of Toronto. There is already one such facility in the region that can accommodate more than 100,000 metric tons.
Nova Scotia, one of Canada’s smaller Atlantic provinces, is going full-steam ahead on composting, Hanson adds. The province currently has nine composting facilities with plans to build four more this year.
“Nova Scotia is the only jurisdiction in North America to have banned organic wastes and recyclables from its landfill sites,” Hanson says.
In other recycling news, Hanson reports that the dairy industry across Canada is increasingly being expected to contribute to the recovery of its containers. In Nova Scotia and the three western provinces, governments are negotiating with the dairy producers for a two cent per container contribution toward the costs of curbside recycling programs or, alternatively, a deposit system.
Blue Box programs across the country are also expanding the range of containers that can be included. British Columbia and Alberta are now collecting water and juice containers while Ontario is going after wine and spirits bottles through its blue box programs. The Province of Quebec has issued a new regulation, which became effective Jan. 1, that requires manufacturers of paints and oils to establish a system to collect their wastes.
In other parts of Canada, there are two different methods being used to collect used motor oil, Hanson says. In eastern Canada, the sellers are expected to take back the oil or make arrangements to have someone else collect it. In the three Prairie provinces out west, they take a wholesale approach. The brand owners pay a levy to fund special depots.
“The western alternative has proven to be more successful,” Hanson says. “Nova Scotia is considering changing to that model. In Ontario, we don’t have a program yet to collect used motor oil.”
BATTERY-POWERED INDUSTRY
A new area that Canadian governments are beginning to look at is the disposal or recycling of electrical and electronic goods. A study by Environment Canada released last October came up with the same findings as a similar report put out by the National Safety Council (NSC), Itasca, Ill., in the United States, Hanson says.
“More and more municipalities are including products such as cell phones and computers with hazardous wastes,” Hanson notes. “A new study just getting underway is looking at the toxic nature of electronic waste and the feasibility of different recovery systems.”
The growth in demand for products such as computers and cell phones can be measured by the 20% demand in batteries for the sector last year, notes Bruce McIver of Montreal-based Nova PB Inc., Canada’s largest integrated lead recycler.
The automotive battery side is not as strong, McIver reports, due to a number of factors including slower auto sales in the fourth quarter, a cooler summer and warmer winter in much of the country.
McIver notes that the price of lead continues to be at a very low ebb, which made for a tough year for producers last year. Cominco in British Columbia even shut down its lead and zinc production for a couple of months because the company found that it could make more money selling its electricity south of the border.
Nova PB has some built-in protection from low lead prices though. The company does a large business in battery tolling at fixed prices and it has the capability to process waste oil as an alternative to natural gas. “We are taking in an increasing number of waste oil filters,” McIver says.
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Green Glass Turned Away in Ontario |
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Recyclers and haulers in Ontario, Canada, who collect glass containers have received some unwelcome news. Consumers Glass, Ontario’s major glass recycling end market consumer, no longer accepts green glass. The new policy became effective March 1. According to John Hanson of the Recycling Council of Ontario (RCO), Toronto, Consumers Glass has advised its processor, NexCycle Industries of Guelph, Ontario, to discontinue purchasing curbside green recycled glass for its use from the Ontario Municipal Blue Box program starting on that date. The decision is probably due to the closing of a Molson Brewing Co. plant in Barrie, Ontario. According to the RCO, much of that facility’s production went into non-refillable green bottles destined for the U.S. market. Molson will now service the U.S. market from its Montreal brewery, and consequently, Consumers Glass will supply Molson green cullet in Montreal from its New Brunswick facility instead of from Ontario. “This is very bad news because alternative markets such as reflective paint, filter mediums, glass blasting, “glassphalt,” and construction aggregate may not be adequate to absorb the material” says Hanson of the loss of the end market. “Even if a home can be found, municipalities will most certainly take a financial hit. To do this and give municipalities and recyclers what amounts to three days notice shows gross insensitivity on the part of Consumers Glass,” he adds. The RCO estimates that slightly more than 100,000 metric tons of glass was collected in Ontario last year, with roughly 40,000 to 45,000 metric tons of that being clear glass; another 40,000 metric tons or so sold as mixed glass; and 30,000 to 35,000 metric tons sold as color-separated green or amber cullet. Under Ontario’s mandatory recycling requirements, both clear and colored glass bottles must be collected in cities with more than 5,000 residents. “It is critical that if municipal programs are to continue to collect this material, plans be devised as soon as possible to support colored glass recycling,” says Hanson. |
THE SCRAP SCENE
In the recycled scrap metal industry, 2000 was not a great year. There were no major Chapter 11s in Canada in 2000, says Canadian Association of Recycling Industries executive director Len Shaw, and there is still quite a bit of activity on the steel front. But the slowdown in the U.S. and cut backs in production in the auto industry are beginning to have some effect on the Canadian industry.
There are about 1,000 companies in Canada engaged in the recycled metal trade. Together they employ about 15,000 and produced 10 to 11 million metric tons of product in 1999. Michael Clapham, Industry Canada senior environmental specialist, reports the dollar value of domestic exports were up slightly in 2000-to $1.43 billion (CDN) as compared to $1.28 billion in 1999. The dollar value of imports was also up-$1.5 billion as compared to $1.36 billion the year before.
“It is what we would expect given the strong economy in 2000,” Clapham says.
Jack Livingston, director of nonferrous trading for Triple M Metal Inc., Brampton, Ontario, one of the larger operations in the country, says that while the last two years have been good, the current trend is down. “It is becoming more difficult to make sales,” he adds, “but they can still be made. We expect our export volumes and profits to be down a little this year but we hope to avoid layoffs and are hopeful that there will be some more positive developments in the third quarter of the year.”
The 20-year-old business has about 200 employees working out of nine yards in different parts of Ontario. Livingston reports that Triple M processes 130,000 metric tons of ferrous metals and 4,000 to 5,000 metric tons of nonferrous metal per month. The company is currently installing new equipment in its plants to make them more efficient.
Livingston’s point of view is backed up by other metal recyclers across the country. Jack Lazareck of Logan Iron and Metal Works in Winnipeg describes business as “so-so.” “Business is a little slower now than it has been in recent years,” he says. “Some prices are a little soft. When prices fall, some people stop bringing stuff in,” he adds.
“From what I have been reading, the steel business is flat because auto sales and housing starts are down. The word is that not much is going to happen. It doesn’t take much for prices to rise a couple of cents or drop a couple of cents and that translates into a lot of money.”
IPSCO, based in Regina, Saskatch-ewan, is a major scrap metal consumer and processor in western Canada. Bernie Frankowski, purchasing agent for the company, agrees that raw material prices are poor.
“The prices are lower,” Frankowski says, “but the supply side is no problem for this facility. That is mainly because we are strictly a hot band and plate producer. A lot of our product is coil for pipe mills. We have a lot of downstream facilities that supply a good proportion of our product for processing.”
Frankowski notes though he doesn’t expect prices to be where they should be in the first part of 2001. “We hope to see improvement in demand and pricing in the second part of the year,” he says.
On the west coast, Richmond Steel general manager Harb Dhillon is quite pessimistic about business conditions. “Business has been in the doldrums for three years and continues to be poor,” he says. “There is so much supply in the market that I can’t see any signs of improvement in the short term. Volume-wise, our sales are steady but they are down dollar-wise.”
For 2001, Dhillon is expecting to maintain the status quo and retain Richmond Steel’s workforce of 40.
In contrast to the recycled metal industry, recycled paper processors are doing well, says David Church, director of Transportation, Recycling and Purchasing for the Forest Products Association of Canada . [Formerly the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association (CPPA).]
Church, who also works for a paper recycling company, reports that the industry can use all the recovered fiber it can get its hands on and more. “Our sales were $2.9 million last year, up from $2.3 million in 1999,” he says. “We trade world wide. We processed 5.2 million metric tons last year and we are doing more every year. There is no reason that the story will be any different in 2001.”
The author is a freelance writer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
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