Friday November 22, 2019 ~ GREATER VICTORIA
by Mary P Brooke ~ West Shore Voice News
The process of change starts with awareness and information. The CRD will be making the rounds to municipal councils in Greater Victoria to present their new Solid Waste Management Plan strategy for inviting municipalities to enact bylaws that will strengthen the recycling requirements of industrial operations, construction projects and also multi-family housing units.
Project lead is Russ Smith, Senior Manager, Environmental Resource Management, Parks & Environmental Services, CRD.
A public open house at the Juan de Fuca Seniors Centre on November 16 was attended by Smith and other CRD reps including Tom Watkins, Manager, Policy & Planning, Environmental Resource Management and Haneen Ghebari who was promoting the MyRecyclopedia information service.
After collecting public input, presentations will be made in the new year to all councils with a defined proposed strategy aimed at encouraging the creation of bylaws that would serve to reduce waste that goes into the landfill. | See comments from View Royal councillors on the CRD presentation from their November 12, 2019 Committee of the Whole.
This comes long after the success of the curbside blue box program that has been operating for over 30 years. While improvements can still be made by many households for putting out recyclables in their blue boxes ( if you’re not sure what can be accepted in the blue box there’s a handy search tool at https://www.crd.bc.ca/service/waste-recycling/recycle/myrecyclopedia ), the challenge is to reduce overall volume of waste that ends up in the region’s Hartland Landfill. The focus is on reducing the contribution of industrial and construction site waste into the landfill.
Thirty years ago, the amount of garbage contributed to the Hartland Landfill was 671 kg/person. Now the target is to reduce the current amount of waste going into the landfill (380 kg/person) down to 250 kg/person by 2030. Public input can be contributed up to December 1 at www.crd.bc.ca/rethinkwaste .
The CRD’s Solid Waste Management Plan was last fully updated in 1995, with amendments made as needed. It’s time for this current overhaul. There will be a two-year pilot program to reduce non-curbside materials with revenues for that achieved through tipping fees (i.e. no direct cost to municipalities in the CRD’s annual levy).
At the present rate, the landfill would be full by 2045 but new initiatives have in mind the goal of extending the life of the landfill to 2100.
Despite current efforts to discourage the inclusion of kitchen scraps in household garbage and on-the-ground efforts like digging deeper into the hillside at the landfill to make more room, it’s still important to reduce the contribution of waste to the site. Waste products are already used to some degree for the creation of by-products (for energy use or sale).