Reduce, reuse and recyle.
These principles apply to each and every resident of the province's capital city and beyond as society attempts to rid itself of unnecessary waste in our landfills.
The City of St. John’s, which rolled out its new garbage bin program Thursday, has been working diligently with residents and a host of waste reduction companies and specialists to ensure that these numbers continue on an upward climb.
“Right now, we are at 65 per cent for recycling in the city. We have a three per cent contamination rate which is very low, especially when compared to other jurisdictions across Canada,” said St. John’s Coun. Ian Froude during a visit to Robin Hood Bay last week.
“We have the two-way streams — fibres and basically paper and cardboard and containers, tin cans, plastic containers, lids on a coffee cup etc.,” he added.
He said following the reduce, reuse and recycle model is key. He emphasized recycling as this converts waste into reusable material.
He said recycling is a key component of modern waste reduction and includes materials such as paper, cardboard, metal, plastic, tires, textiles and electronics.
Materials to be recycled are either brought to a collection centre or picked up curbside, then are sorted, cleaned, and reprocessed into new materials destined for manufacturing.
“Now we are doing the automated garbage collection with the medium-size bin. Part of the purpose was to encourage recycling to get people down to a lower bag limit on waste so they’ll recycle instead of getting it chucked in the landfill and rotting for all eternity,” Froude said.
He said there are two opportunities for residents — one, to motivate the 65 per cent of people who are already recycling to recycle more of their stuff; and secondly, to get the 35 per cent who are not recycling to get on board and help raise the numbers to new levels.
Froude said participation includes the regular blue bag at the curb that either does or doesn't contain all of the household recyclables. He added that in lots of cases it’s probably not including all those.
“There is the opportunity there to change the behaviour, so if you’re recycling cardboard and paper right now, how about considering recycling your containers as well? So, there’s expansion possible with it in that 65 per cent,” he said.
“Then of course there’s a big opportunity to get more of those 35 per cent of (non-participating) people recycling as well. The advice that Public Works gives is start with cardboard and paper because it is one of the easiest things to begin recycling,” he added.
He said a number of those products coming to the landfill can be sorted and packaged to be sold as a revenue source, which helps to maintain the recycling programs and perhaps eventually providing them with funds to expand.
“It is a high-valued product when it is being re-sold, so there are two opportunities there that I think are important,” he said.
For more information on these and a host of recycling programs, see the St. John’s City Guide Summer 2018 (pages 12-17) online at www.stjohns.ca or reference the one each home should have received in the mail recently for more information.
Q&A
Answering some frequently asked questions about recycling in the community
The Telegram
St. John’s Coun. Ian Froude was asked a number of questions pertaining to recycling, an ongoing process being carried out by the city and municipalities nationwide.
The following are Froude’s responses:
Glass
“Glass is not included on our curbside pickup and the reasons are is that it contaminates, it often breaks in transit, on the curb or in transit to the landfill and that could cause workplace injuries. It can cause issues with the separation line so if there are broken pieces of glass in the assembly line when it is being separated it causes issues of breakdowns and safety concerns. So, glass right now is put in a black bag and that gets chucked into the landfill.”
Compost
“I think ideally we’d have a composting program but the cost of such is not small. I also understand there is not a whole lot of market for the end product.
“We just mandated yard waste to be compostable. To be placed in brown paper bags so that would no longer be ending up in the landfill and filling up a very expensive landfill up needlessly.
“That will bring … a very significant amount of compostable material that will be diverted from the landfill. That will then be … composted to be used for landscaping projects and those sorts of things.
“On the food side of things it’s a little tougher because of the volume we’re producing. We’re on an island, the market for that product is not significant enough to justify the cost of putting that sort of program in place.
“That of course can change as markets change.”
Grocery bags
An international business report recently said China has stopped purchasing plastic grocery bags which impacts a host of jurisdictions that now have to determine what they do with that waste product.
Froude said: “Some grocery stores have return programs on site. Residents have two options, they can bring their plastic bags to the grocery stores — most take them and have bins located on site for that, and recycle them. Otherwise they go in the landfill in people’s garbage.
“As we understand it there is very little market for that product, so it doesn’t make sense as a waste stream.
“The blue bags themselves, that contain the recycling, we sell that through a third party on the market and that’s actually the only product that would go to China. The rest is sold on the domestic market. So those blue bags are recyclable as well. They get recycled.
“On the front end of it, on the upstream challenge of plastic bags, we’re trying to get the province to agree to a ban on plastic bags.
“We passed a resolution at council unanimously to call on the province to do that as had MNL (Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador) provincially, so we’re hoping the province will act on that.
“The use of cloth bags (helps). At Costco people use cardboard boxes, which of course are recyclable, (and that) works really well. The number of people who go through Costco and do that in the run of a day is very significant, so people are accustomed to that sort of system.
They have cloth bags in other cities, not so much here, but I’ve seen … people using carts, like those rolly carts you see on the streets. So, (you can use) cloth bags, recycle the (plastic) ones you do use by using your grocery store, use cardboard boxes, your own backpack — there’s a bunch of options there for people to reduce that use.”