Bruce County Council heard a report surrounding ideas for a multi-municipal collaboration for supporting landfill diversion.
GEI Consulting was retained by the county last year, as staff was told to investigate emerging issues for solid waste diversion at the landfills for member municipalities.
Matt Nelson, vice-president and senior project manager and environmental practice lead with GEI Consultants, shared some of the ways the lower-tiered municipalities could work together to help with the cost of different diversion methods.
“All of our member municipalities manage their own waste management systems, so they have their own landfills, manage their own collection, own diversion systems including pick-up at landfill,” Nelson explained. “Each of those member municipalities, as we’re aware, have broad differences across our large geography, large difference in population, large differences in summer population, waste volumes, infrastructure, staffing, those sorts of things.”
He added, “The existing diversion activities including the management of all their construction debris, any kind of diversion pick-ups are done on a site-specific basis by the operations team at each municipality. And collaboration is really an essential or key part of how Bruce County supports those operations, so through the waste committee meetings they have and through the regular meetings of the member municipalities.”
Over the past year, the firm had been working with the member municipalities, the Bruce Area Solid Waste Recycling (BASWR), and the Waste Management Committee.
Given that the lower-tier municipalities had a wide range of population, a difference in the number of housing units served, and differences in summer population compared to the rest of the year, Nelson suggested that it would be advantageous for municipalities to come to cooperative agreements for waste collection and diversion.
“The other issues affecting our more rurally-based municipalities are the processing and economy of scale,” he explained. “There [are] a lot of base costs to any program. So a very small program can be proportionately more expensive to set up.”
GEI also suggested that BASWR continue to get support in order to participate in regional coordination forums where relevant operational data and program information could be shared.
The report shared five recommendations:
– Monitor impacts on diversion rates, landfill usage, and service delivery across municipalities
– Facilitate the exchange of information and experiences related to implementation
– Support planning for ineligible waste streams as needs and opportunities are identified by Member Municipalities
– Track regulatory developments and potential future program changes
– Identify opportunities for collaboration should conditions evolve
During discussions, there were suggestions to make it easier for commercial, industrial, and institutional properties to make it easier to recycle, as those properties were excluded with the provincial update to the Blue Box program.
Warden Luke Charbonneau also requested that staff consider an expansion with Household Hazardous Waste drop-off days.
He shared that for his municipality of Saugeen Shores, the hazardous waste collection days at the local landfill were extremely popular, as it’s the only chance for many residents to properly dispose of things like batteries, paints, fluorescent lights, pesticides, and pool chemicals, but they only happened once or twice a year, depending on which municipality someone lives in.
Charbonneau in particular asked how the service would be able to keep up with projected population growth.
“Yes, we’ve noticed some growing pains in certain regions across the county,” said Bruce County Director of Transportation and Environmental Services Adam Stanley. “Noting the budget schedules that will be coming up, [and] the work plans that would be involved with Hazardous Waste days, there could be some considerations for increasing the budget and those could be incorporated in the budget process… to increase the number of events or to increase the hours.”