It was the day before the rats moved into town.
This video looks at the current situation in Saskatoon SK. where an artificial scarcity is being used as justification to propose the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars.
It was the day before the rats moved into town.
This video looks at the current situation in Saskatoon SK. where an artificial scarcity is being used as justification to propose the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The city administration has been telling us here in Regina that we the landfill is full and we really need a new one. They’ve been saying this for the past 25 years.
isn’t “recycling” supposed to save the land(fill)?
The good thing about the rats moving into town means that you don’t have as far to go to shoot them.
Leftist and their “there are no more 100% environmentally secure landfill sites available within 500 miles”. What they really mean is ” … until we finish destroying capitalism”.
Stupid is the new smart.
Bjorn Lomberg took a look at the whole landfill thing in the “skeptical environmentalist”.
After they crunched the numbers, it turned out that a single landfill 18 miles square would be able to handle all of the waste generated by the US for the whole of the 21st Century.
Granted, a single landfill that size would be totally impractical, but it does point out the hysteria over running out of room for landfills.
The only real hysteria wrt landfills, is NIMBY.
Its a real shame that some qualified recycling companies that wish to participate in the Saskatchewan recycling and waste reduction markets are forbidden to do so. SWEEP and certain members of the Saskatchewan Waste Reduction Council have made no bones about their wishes to exclude certain companies. Worse yet, the current sitting government and their beaurocrates have done nothing to open the doors or level the playing field. Companies such as ours are seeking support in petitioning the Environment Minister to act within his powers and create a fair and equal market place WITHIN Saskatchewan: http://www.notreadyforthescrapheap.com/full-fair-and-equal.html
The rats moved into landfill sites when burning was banned. Can someone explain the logic of using non-renewable diesel fuel in crawler trackers to clay cover garbage that largely consists of paper based packaging materials; paper based materials that can easily be sourced from renewable trees that are otherwise worthless for anything else.
I really hope that people are sending a link to this video to every Saskatoon Councillor along with a strongly worded “get your hands out of my pockets” type e-mail. Oh and when you do, scream loud and long about them wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on studying wind levels at the landfill, which of course is just preparatory to spending millions of dollars on frigging windmills up there.
‘Puddin n pie’ asked ‘isn’t “recycling” supposed to save the land(fill)?’
The problem is ‘recycling’ some worthless piece of glass which doesn’t cause any problems in a landfill at a cost of $400 or $500 per ton or putting it in the landfill at $70 to $100 per ton.
Doesn’t it waste taxpayers’ dollars unnecessarily, and isn’t society poorer off when money is misspent ‘diverting’ what should just be thrown away?
There’s lots of people who don’t think anything should be thrown in a landfill. Sacred Ground indeed.
garbagehead
Actually it’s worse than that. It appears that most of the “blue-box” glass that allegedly went to Consumers Glass in Mississauga actually went into the landfills. It wasn’t worth trucking any more than 30-40k.
Tire recycling just encouraged fly-by nights to collect disposal fees and then make a pile in some woodlot.
It was economically feasable to recover the stainless steel beadwire from Truck tires until Boob Rae banned burning ANY rubber in Ontario…including the petty residue on the bead wire ripped from the truck tires. Now the bead wire is shipped to OHIO….and the jobs with it.
The only real hysteria wrt landfills, is NIMBY.
So I take it you’d be okay with a landfill abutting your property? It’s easy to say NIMBY when you’re not the affected party.
Burying garbage is throwing away energy. I’d rather we incinerate it and produce power with it. Reserve the landfill for stuff that can’t burn. And only recycle what makes economical sense, like aluminum.
Ottawa, now known as “Rat-owa” and not because of the politicians, ran into trouble as soon as curbside compostable recycling started.
GreenNeck
[……And only recycle what makes economical sense, like aluminum……]
All metals actually although aluminum recycling leads—10% of the energy compared to refining bauxite to aluminum.
Iron is the most recycled material throughout history. It is hypothetically possible your garden spade has some material that was present at Gagamela….Agincourt….or Waterloo..
GreenNeck
‘All metals actually….Iron is the most recycled material throughout history.’
Iron and many other metals are recycled NOT by consumers but by industry itself in its own manufacturing and re-manufacturing processes. That’s where most of the great recycling numbers on any metal come from.
That still leaves the fact that recycling ‘tin’ cans is a money loser and most of these are buried in landfills in segregated plots for ‘access’ at some future time. Apparently greenies aren’t aware that buried tin cans become old rusty tin cans. Real science isn’t something that greenies do well.
“After they crunched the numbers, it turned out that a single landfill 18 miles square would be able to handle all of the waste generated by the US for the whole of the 21st Century.”
BS…you’d have to be a fool to believe this crap.
That book received the following:
The DCSD cited The Skeptical Environmentalist for:
1. Fabrication of data;
2. Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation);
3. Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods;
4. Distorted interpretation of conclusions;
5. Plagiarism;
6. Deliberate misinterpretation of others’ results.
“Granted, a single landfill that size would be totally impractical, but it does point out the hysteria over running out of room for landfills.”
Come to the Vancouver landfill, which you can now see from highway 99, over the trees…and then tell me it’s all ‘hysteria’.
“Doesn’t it waste taxpayers’ dollars unnecessarily, and isn’t society poorer off when money is misspent ‘diverting’ what should just be thrown away?”
Most of the things that go in your trash can shouldn’t just be ‘thrown away’. Should anything really be buried in the ground? It’s the stupidest and least thought out plan..just put it in a hole in the ground…wow, human ingenuity at its finest.
“Burying garbage is throwing away energy. I’d rather we incinerate it and produce power with it. Reserve the landfill for stuff that can’t burn. And only recycle what makes economical sense, like aluminum.”
Good post…when we incinerate garbage we are still left with ‘stuff’ that needs to be disposed of though..and it’s really nasty stuff too. That being said, burning is definitely better than burying (ANYTHING is better than burying).
“That still leaves the fact that recycling ‘tin’ cans is a money loser”
Proof?
“buried in landfills in segregated plots for ‘access’ at some future time. ”
Hold on, why would that be a better solution? Why would you spend time to bury it, just to later dig it out to recycle it? Why wouldn’t you just recycle it to begin with.
“Apparently greenies aren’t aware that buried tin cans become old rusty tin cans. ”
What’s your point? Seems you don’t have one, nor does it seem like you have any clue as to what you’re beaking about.
Actually …
“But now the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation has rebuked the Committee for dishonesty of its own. The Ministry’s ruling, which was announced just before Christmas, was sweeping in its denunciation of the Committee on Scientific Dishonesty. It found that the committee had used “sloppy” and “emotive” language to obscure their actual finding that Lomborg had not been guilty of gross negligence or deliberate dishonesty.
The Ministry ruled that the Committee treatment of Lomborg was “dissatisfactory,” “deserving of criticism,” and “emotional.” The Committee relied entirely on excerpts from a hit-piece on Lomborg published by Scientific American and some material from Time Magazine. Not surprisingly, then, the Ministry declared the Committee’s ruling to be “completely void of argumentation.” Further, the Ministry charged that the Committee had not even permitted Lomborg an opportunity to respond.”
Lomborg’s book has received much more criticism that just the DCSD’s. Even if you ignore any evaluation of the methods, facts, and statistics, his conclusions are unsupported, ignore reality, and cherry picks.
Do you really expect one book, written by a political scientist, on a huge range of subjects which disputes experts in each field to be accurate?
Aside from whether or not you could fit all of the US’s garbage into a square landfill with 28km long sides…the question is..why? why throw what was a short time ago deemed ‘valuable’ into the ground and bury it? It’s one of the most primitive ideas around! I’m sure we were doing the same thing back in caveman days!
BTJ
“Why would you spend time to bury it, just to later dig it out to recycle it? Why wouldn’t you just recycle it to begin with?”
Because you need a MARKET to recycle materials. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. An unintended result of recycling programs in North America is the expensive collection and sorting of materials without a market.
Nothing is recycled until it’s turned into another product and bought by someone. If there no market, there is no recycling. Tin cans are collected and then buried in landfills all across North America. If a government promises to ‘recycle’ a material, and taxpayers pay through the nose to recycle, the government can’t really come back and tell you that a lot of that stuff we picked up from you got put in the landfill anyway or they would have a revolt on their hands.
Edmonton’s ‘state of the art’ co-mingled recycling system which city officials want to import to Saskatoon even takes materials that have an economic value and degrades them so much that they can’t give the stuff away. Want proof? Check out the thousands of tons of newspaper that they are ‘storing’ onsite at their processing plant. Too contaminated by other recyclables (glass, tin) to have any value and they did that to themselves. There’s no market, maybe they’ll wind up burning it. It will be the most expensive fire starter in history. And won’t the greenies love the release of carbon into the atmosphere!
Closer to home, there were tons of bales of plastics ‘stored’ in the Humboldt dump. Expensively collected and bound together. Mother Nature didn’t like that so she sent a lot of rain and these bales floated into Joe Lake, and eventually broke apart to be strewn all across the shoreline. When much of the plastic was eventually collected again, they didn’t bother to clean it, bale it and ‘store’ it, they just buried it in the landfill. Apparently ‘diverting’ these plastics from the landfill wasn’t important anymore.
Oh and anything is not better than burying stuff. If a material is environmentally benign what moral issue do have with burying it? There are issues that need to be addressed that are more important than ‘recycling’ another glass jar. But then again, I’m not a greenie. I actually like addressing real problems, not fake ones.
“Because you need a MARKET to recycle materials.”
Seems to me there is a lot of tin being used. Why wouldn’t you just recycle it first, then store it? Why add all that extra work and time of burying and digging?
“An unintended result of recycling programs in North America is the expensive collection and sorting of materials without a market.”
Everything is collected anyways..whether it’s in your trash or not.
“heck out the thousands of tons of newspaper that they are ‘storing’ onsite at their processing plant.”
Compost it.
“Closer to home, there were tons of bales of plastics ‘stored’ in the Humboldt dump. Expensively collected and bound together. Mother Nature didn’t like that so she sent a lot of rain and these bales floated into Joe Lake, and eventually broke apart to be strewn all across the shoreline. When much of the plastic was eventually collected again, they didn’t bother to clean it, bale it and ‘store’ it, they just buried it in the landfill. Apparently ‘diverting’ these plastics from the landfill wasn’t important anymore.”
Random stories about human incompetence don’t prove anything about the concept of recycling.
“Oh and anything is not better than burying stuff. If a material is environmentally benign what moral issue do have with burying it?”
Time and effort was put into making something that people deemed valuable, just to be deemed completely worthless without altering that same product, to the degree that time and effort is spent to bury it…that’s retarded.
“I actually like addressing real problems, not fake ones.”
Check out the situation in Vancouver, then tell me there is no problem. The city is not planning on building a half-billion dollar incinerator for no reason.
BTJ:
Good post…when we incinerate garbage we are still left with ‘stuff’ that needs to be disposed of though..and it’s really nasty stuff too. That being said, burning is definitely better than burying (ANYTHING is better than burying).
Apparently, you are unaware of plasma gasification, which is NOT incineration, if you’d care to educate yourself. Google could be your friend. It produces a synthetic, combustible, gas, which produces enough energy to run the plant, and extra energy to send to the grid. It also produces a slag, from which heavy metals can be removed, and then used as a component in asphalt. Despite most claims from so-called environmentalists, studies show that there are no harmful air emissions and indeed most gasification plants don’t even need a smoke stack. Elements that are most responsible for bad odours from conventional incinerators – mostly sulphur – are separated from the gas before the power generation phase, and, in sulphur’s case, sold to the fertilizer industry.
The solid slag produced is, depending on which source you cite, 1/15th to 1/25th of the mass of the original input waste. Now, since you’ve demonstrated you’re arithmetically challenged in the past, let me help you here: this means for every ton of input waste, you end up with 80 to 140 pounds of output slag. A plant processing 100 tons of MSW per day would produce enough slag to resurface 1000-1500 miles of urban roadway per year (that’s for a standard two-lane road; make it a multi-lane highway, and it’s much less.)
As for the “nasty stuff” you referred to: Only 10 gms – that’s less than two loonies – of heavy metal slag is produced. A plant processing 100 tons a day produces less than a ton of heavy metal in a year. To put that into perspective, that makes a cube less than 18 inches per side, or about the size of a big microwave. Run the plant for ten years and the total heavy waste would fit inside a big refrigerator. To me, scares about heavy metal waste are typical of the eco-weenies: big on exaggeration, very short on facts.
Sacred garbage programs that include recycling rituals are designed to empower local governments and especially their unions. Was there anything else?
First off, KevinB, you can go f**k yourself…save the smart ass attitude for yourself. I know what plasma gasification is, thanks. What I’m not sure of is where you’re going with it.
“Now, since you’ve demonstrated you’re arithmetically challenged in the past,”
Quote me or shut-up.
“As for the “nasty stuff” you referred to: Only 10 gms – that’s less than two loonies – of heavy metal slag is produced.”
Where did I say that the ‘nasty stuff’ was heavy metals…the nasty stuff is the slag…the product of an uncontrolled, high-energy, multiple chemical reaction. There’s a reason why it’s used in asphalt…because it’s the only safe place to put it!
“A plant processing 100 tons of MSW per day would produce enough slag to resurface 1000-1500 miles of urban roadway per year (that’s for a standard two-lane road; make it a multi-lane highway, and it’s much less”
Please…you sound like you’re implying that slag is a key component of asphalt and without it we wouldn’t be able to pave our roads…asphalt is just a benign, stable, and enclosed place to store the crap.
Most larger municipalities process WAY more than 100 tonnes a day…in Vancouver it’s 500,000 tonnes a year.
BTJ
“Everything is collected anyways..whether it’s in your trash or not.”
Yes but when it’s collected as trash we are really good at doing that very inexpensively. When the same materials are collected through the recycling stream we do that very expensively.
The recycling of most materials provides no economic or environmental benefit. It just makes some people feel really good about themselves. If you want to do that, pay a private operator to take away your recyclables and leave the rest of us alone.
Much of what is thrown away doesn’t have value in an of itself once the utility it was created for is gone. I’m buying the beans in the tin can or the pasta sauce in the glass jar. I just need the packaging to get what I value home. Once I’ve opened the jar to get the contents, it has no value to me.
If it’s economically viable for someone to collect and recycle that jar, it will be done without the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers money.
You also missed the point about Edmonton’s tons of contaminated paper. If they had collected it like we do in Saskatoon (source separated) it has an economic value and can bring in revenue. Their incredibly expensive collection system ‘downcycled’ it into something worthless. ‘Compost it’ indeed. Instead of grade 8 or even grade 6 paper for sale, you are going to ‘compost it.’
Nice of you to be so cavalier about destroying value. Maybe you should take an economics course. I’d suggest beginning with opportunity cost.
The biggest cost environmentalism poses is far larger than those produced by the cost benefit measures usually argued over.
By having these endless environmental campaigns, which ultimately boil down to quality of life debates, the political oxygen is consumed, and none is left for other issues like under achievement in schools. Could environmentalists, and all other purveyors of vanity/quality of life politics, relent, and let politics resolve other, larger issues, first?
Let’s face it – there is a huge fraction of public school graduates who will never have a decent job, income, or the satisfaction of feeling clever, but could have had all these things, if the public debate focused on improving the scholastic training of those whose cognitive gifts are a little less than the higher achievers, rather than second-tier issues, as all environmental ones are.
How about we judge our politics by how it trains/educates -or ignores – young people, who are weaker members of our society, in comparison to adults.
One issue at a time; with the most important, addressed first.
“Yes but when it’s collected as trash we are really good at doing that very inexpensively. When the same materials are collected through the recycling stream we do that very expensively.”
Huh? Either way a truck drives around and picks it up…what’s the difference?
“The recycling of most materials provides no economic or environmental benefit.”
Empty, unsupported statements are worthless.
“Much of what is thrown away doesn’t have value in an of itself once the utility it was created for is gone. I’m buying the beans in the tin can or the pasta sauce in the glass jar. I just need the packaging to get what I value home. Once I’ve opened the jar to get the contents, it has no value to me.”
No, but they do to the guy who puts the beans in the can. It’s still a vessel for putting things in, just as it was before the beans got put in.
“If it’s economically viable for someone to collect and recycle that jar, it will be done without the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers money.”
Show me this ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ that is spent on recycling…you’re delusional. What you FAIL miserably to do with your economic assessments is factor in SUBSIDIES…they artificially reduce the ‘cost’ of mining and producing raw materials.
“You also missed the point about Edmonton’s tons of contaminated paper. If they had collected it like we do in Saskatoon (source separated) it has an economic value and can bring in revenue. Their incredibly expensive collection system ‘downcycled’ it into something worthless. ‘Compost it’ indeed. Instead of grade 8 or even grade 6 paper for sale, you are going to ‘compost it.'”
If it’s contaminated there’s NO grade of paper to make it into, so compost it. EVERYTHING should be source separated…that’s how recycling should work…how does that support the argument against recycling?
Compost still has value…especially if done anaerobically.
BTJ
1)
“Yes but when it’s collected as trash we are really good at doing that very inexpensively. When the same materials are collected through the recycling stream we do that very expensively.” Huh? Either way a truck drives around and picks it up…what’s the difference?
The difference is that you haven’t been paying attention. The city of Saskatoon doesn’t even attempt to hide that it’s going to cost way more to recycle more materials. Just look at the city’s ‘Let’s Talk Recycling.’ It shows that instituting a mandatory curbside recycling program will cost up to 11 million dollars. That’s 10 million more per year than we are spending now. Without going into detail about the economics of recycling, you have to admit that if we have to spend $10 million more to recycle than to throw away, then recycling material is much more expensive to the civic ratepayer than sending that material to the landfill.
2)
“The recycling of most materials provides no economic or environmental benefit.” Empty, unsupported statements are worthless.
Paper is the only recyclable outside of material taken to SARCAN which has a viable market. The reason tons of plastic was stored at Humboldt to begin with was because no one wanted it. Anyone could have taken it for the cost of transportation.
When you live far away from hubs of manufacturing, transportation costs are huge. I don’t have the space here to give you a tutorial on low value recyclable materials. Kate posted a video a while back called ‘Recycling Myths of Saskatoon’ which showed that Sarcan PAYS a company to take glass of its hands. The company won’t even take it for free.
3)
“Show me this ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ that is spent on recycling”
Did you miss the graph on the video? $320 million dollars over the next two decades will be spent on recycling in Saskatoon if the greenies get their way.
4)
“If it’s contaminated there’s NO grade of paper to make it into, so compost it.”
It WASN’T contaminated when the household had it. Edmonton’s system of collecting all recyclables together caused the cross-contamination. That same system is the one favoured by the City of Saskatoon.
5)
EVERYTHING should be source separated…that’s how recycling should work
Maybe you should run for city council this is the only point that you actually make sense on. If you are going to design a recycling program then source separating is the only way to do it unless you like creating garbage and destroying value. However that doesn’t seem to be a big concern to councillors and administration. Watch for a co-mingled collection system in Saskatoon if they have their way.
In my hometown, it was the bears that moved in!!
Remind me. Is there a shortage of holes in Canada? Or anywhere?
The whole “landfill” argument is just another enviromental disguise for the real objective of the eco-fascist ideaology – the destruction of man.
These people don’t care about the environment, nor landfills. They want to end consumer/industrial society … for you, but not for they.
“That’s 10 million more per year than we are spending now. Without going into detail about the economics of recycling, you have to admit that if we have to spend $10 million more to recycle than to throw away, then recycling material is much more expensive to the civic ratepayer than sending that material to the landfill.”
I am EXTREMELY skeptical about these numbers…are you saying that Sask only pays 1 million dollars for their waste management? If so, you’re mistaken. What I do know about Sask is that it tends to be ‘behind’…just like small town, midwest America, it tends to be a good 10 years behind larger metropolitans in respect to just about everything.
“Paper is the only recyclable outside of material taken to SARCAN which has a viable market. The reason tons of plastic was stored at Humboldt to begin with was because no one wanted it.”
There are many types of plastic, each with it’s own market. You can’t just lump it together as ‘plastic’. By doing so, I clearly see that you are not too knowledgeable on the subject.
“When you live far away from hubs of manufacturing, transportation costs are huge.”
Providing pressure to develop local industry.
” I don’t have the space here to give you a tutorial on low value recyclable materials. ”
Good, spare yourself, I work in resource management, and work closely with material engineering, recycling, sustainable development, etc.
“Did you miss the graph on the video? $320 million dollars over the next two decades will be spent on recycling in Saskatoon if the greenies get their way.”
The video is BS…do you believe anything you watch in a video, so long as it fits your opinion?
Right off the bat the guy proves he’s an idiot by declaring that landfills are not a finite resource…OF COURSE THEY ARE!! Unless of course you’d agree to one in your backyard, and even then it’s an invalid statement…land is finite. Would you like to argue that it’s infinite?
Recycling programs tend to cost less over time, especially source separated programs, because people tend to learn and get better, making the program more efficient. Also, with recycling programs comes compost collection programs, which eliminate the odour causing, rat supporting stuff. Organics typically account for about a third of MSW.
“It WASN’T contaminated when the household had it.”
I understand that, I’m saying, at this point, it STILL has value.
“Edmonton’s system of collecting all recyclables together caused the cross-contamination. That same system is the one favoured by the City of Saskatoon.”
So the system is crap, how does that support the notion that ALL recycling systems are crap? Perhaps this is because Alberta, Sask, and Manitoba tend not to have any idea as to what they’re doing when it comes to waste management. The company I work for has experience with this, working with Edmonton and Saskatoon. They’re clueless.
“Watch for a co-mingled collection system in Saskatoon if they have their way.”
Like I said, they’re clueless. So far you’ve only proven that Sask doesn’t know what they’re doing…nothing regarding recycling itself, and certainly nothing to support these ridiculous conspiracy theories that recycling is really an effort by ‘envirofascists’ to take over the world and destroy man.
BTJ
The City of Saskatoon is proposing to spend an ADDITIONAL $10 million per year on recycling over and above what they are now spending to recycle materials ($1 million). They do not believe that there will a reduction in costs on the garbage collection side no matter how much more material is diverted through the recycling system. Dispute the numbers if you like but that’s what the city says.
You can’t be serious about the contaminated paper still having value. That’s like saying its OKAY to break up the Pieta because it would still have value as aggregate. The system that you use needs to protect the economic integrity of the material. Saskatoon isn’t looking at this as being an important consideration.
There are many types of plastic but the only way to collect the plastics which have some kind of market is to collect the unmarketable stuff also. That means the collection and processing of plastics is ultimately uneconomic as the value of the marketable plastics doesn’t make up for the costs of having the uneconomic plastics in the system.
I did independent research and looked up the City’s numbers, ran them through at 3% as the video said and the numbers are even more terrible than the video shows. It looks like the video was very kind to the city. I’m looking forward to the City projections if they ever have the guts to publish them.
Oh you believe that a landfill is a finite resource. NIMBY is a political problem, not an environmental or a economic one.
For example, there are people pushing for higher density accomodations in Saskatoon but when a developer goes to do that (Broadway and on the River) then all of a sudden there’s a cry against the ‘highrise’ mentality. NIMBY is also an issue for big box stores, windmills, and permits to sell liquor. That doesn’t make any existing big box locations or liquor vendors finite resources.
I checked on Vancouver’s adventure on their planned incinerator. Having a real hard time deciding where they are going to put it I see (and there’s even people who are against it all together.) That must make the one they have in Burnaby a finite resource. Maybe they should spend hundreds of millions protecting that filthy old thing and forget building a modern incinerator at a new location.
” They do not believe that there will a reduction in costs on the garbage collection side no matter how much more material is diverted through the recycling system.”
Then what’s the point? Clearly they don’t know what they’re doing, of course there will be a reduction!
“The system that you use needs to protect the economic integrity of the material. Saskatoon isn’t looking at this as being an important consideration.”
Of course, I would never argue otherwise. Sounds like Saskatoon needs to hire someone with some experience and knowledge…they’re clueless apparently.
“You can’t be serious about the contaminated paper still having value. That’s like saying its OKAY to break up the Pieta because it would still have value as aggregate”
I’m not joking, I never said it was ‘ok’..I just said that AT THE MOMENT there is still value, and since we haven’t created the time machine, there is no point in saying ‘well we COULD HAVE gotten X’
“There are many types of plastic but the only way to collect the plastics which have some kind of market is to collect the unmarketable stuff also.”
Sure there is…source separation…people just need to be educated on what is recyclable and what isn’t…number 1,2,4,and 5 plastics are recyclable in most areas.
“Oh you believe that a landfill is a finite resource. NIMBY is a political problem, not an environmental or a economic one.”
I KNOW they are finite! EVEN IF you declared the ‘political’ aspect irrelevant by assuming that ANY and ALL land is potentially a landfill, you still need to argue that land is infinite. Please, go ahead and show that land is infinite…you’ll win one hell of a prize if you can.
You’re looking at landfills from a VERY superficial level…you can’t just put them anywhere! Unless you’re the type who sh!ts where he drinks. Water tables and hydrology are EXTREMELY important variables to consider when planning to fill a hole in the ground with ‘garbage’.
“Having a real hard time deciding where they are going to put it I see (and there’s even people who are against it all together.)”
Of course, Vancouver has it’s fair share of dumb hippies and ideology driven wacko’s.
“That must make the one they have in Burnaby a finite resource.”
The one is Burnaby is too small (80% of the size of the proposed one), it uses old technology (a high-temp, one-stage process that does not separate metals or any other potentially toxic materials) so the ash/slag is extremely toxic and should not be dumped into the landfill, rather than gasification.