glassy eyed

One of these days I'll post a thorough explanation under "introduce yourself", but suffice to say I spent the past 7 years supporting community opposition to a 500 acre (200 ha) industrial landfill - in a city which already hosts 4 similar landfills. We partially succeeded but the project is moving ahead in a different location which doesn't count as a victory for the environment, the community, or even common sense. I have learned a lot about waste and the industry wallowing in it, so expect upcoming rants on this theme, but right now I want to share a hopeful idea:

My neighbor in Ohio had many stories of his adventurous life in Africa. One evening, he told us about this resort where you could bring empty wine bottles and purchase freshly made wine glasses. The simple idea was a small plant that melted and re-formed the glass, to the delight of tourists. Since then, I have always been perplexed at the lack of similar activity here in Canada. I can personally vouch for the supply of empty wine bottles.

But that is not all we have to work with. Wading through statistics on commercial and industrial waste has educated me on the vast tonnage of glass which is not recycled. This is especially true of demolition waste - nearly all old windows end up in landfill in Canada.

It isn't a lack of technology - it's money. A demolition company pays about $85/tonne to dispose of mixed waste. Sure, they could tack on additional wages to have somebody pick out the glass, but then they would still have to transport that glass to an industrial recycler - which may or may not exist within 500 km of where they are working (Canada has a LOT of space between cities). So even if they lightened their disposal load a wee bit, it costs time & money to recycle the glass so doesn't make business sense.

Canada's uniquely sprawling geography is a major factor in our lousy 16% industrial recycling rate (this is not the same as household recycling - we're great at that). Improving recycling rates for materials like construction glass requires far more material processing plants, distributed in every city. I don't just mean "recycling centers" that might sort or re-pack waste. I mean small empty-bottle-to-wine-glass factories. Heck, put the rig on a trailer and move town to town - they can have a heap of recyclable glass waiting.

Glass is especially important because it CAN be re-formed many, many times without losing material utility. In contrast, paper and plastic can only be re-processed a couple of times (if at all) before you end up with useless gook. Also, there is a high cost to making more glass from scratch (beach thieves will be a separate post someday), so we really should make the best use we can of this material.

to sum up:

Ottawa is the trash capital of Canada - no more landfills!
de-centralization for the recycling win
the glass is half full

(I co-founded this campaign in November 2010)