Efforts slow at re-routing recyclables
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Apr 02/01) - After years of leaving refuse to the ravens, Northern communities are turning to the task of managing their small, but growing mountains of garbage.
"Recycle" is their rally cry.
Inuvik has hired a manager to bring order to a landfill that Gerry Veltman, town manager, describes as "a mess" and is beginning a recycling program.
In Fort Simpson, where run-off from the landfill contaminates local ground water, the Deh Cho Friendship Centre is leading an effort to solve the village's waste management problem.
"On a scale of one to ten, we're a one," Gerry Antoine, the centre's director, said Friday at the beginning of a weekend workshop that explored options for waste management.
Antoine wants Fort Simpson to develop a pilot project on waste management and recycling that could serve as a model for small communities across the Northwest Territories.
"Right now there is waste disposal, but no waste management and no recycling," he said.
Antoine said that Municipal and Community Affairs Minister Roger Allen is "interested" in the Fort Simpson initiative, but said the GNWT must become actively involved in developing a waste management program for small communities.
"There is no overall strategy and small communities don't have the resources to develop one," he said.
"There is a role here for the territorial government."
Emery Paquin, director of environmental protection for the GNWT, said his department is working to clean up the way landfills operate.
That may come in the form of suggested guidelines rather than rules, he said - but there is no promise of extra funding to encourage recycling.
Recycling advocates say that any territory-wide strategy on waste management should include a deposit on beverage containers.
Brewers of two beer brands operate a deposit system in the territory for their containers, and the GNWT may require deposits for other drink containers.
A public discussion paper on a deposit policy will be released by the end of April, Paquin said.
Recycling can generate significant savings, but conventional wisdom says that the economics don't work well in a large and sparsely populated region.
That view is being challenged by Raven Recycling, a Yukon-based nonprofit group is carving a niche by picking up recyclables in remote places.
Karl Stellbrink, Ravens's executive director, said that it costs $123 a year to dump the tonne of garbage generated annually by each resident of the NWT. Half the money goes to transportation, half to operating landfills.
Stellbrink estimates that more than 70 per cent of the cans, glass, paper and organic material that goes into landfills can be recycled.
Yellowknife sends three large truckloads of recyclables south each year. It costs about $15,000, and the city breaks even after the material is sold.
The capital should take a lead role in recycling, says environment critic Matthew Grogono.
"It's important that we develop a recycling method here that can serve as a prototype," he said.
"If we can't do it here with all the resources we have, how can we expect it to work in the smaller communities?"
The city's recycling efforts are feeble when compared to Whitehorse, but Public Works Manager Gary Craig, argues that Yellowknife deserves points for being ahead of other places in NWT.
That lead may soon be lost to Inuvik.
After years of ignoring its mounting garbage problem, Inuvik hired Albert Bernhardt to manage the town's landfill.
Berhardt said the landfill is a nightmare zone of empty oil drums and industrial waste with "hardly any space left."
The Inuvik Recycling Society has a federal grant and hired Barbara Armstrong to raise awareness and start a local recycling program. The town has barged recyclables south and this summer may even fly some out.
Pilots sometimes add take on water for ballast and Armstrong said it would make sense for them to fly out something that has some value.
If Northerners are looking for inspiration, they might look to Edmonton, which has become a model for recycling and composting.
Gary Spotowski, Edmonton's waste management education coordinator, said luck and a landfill crisis made the city become a leader.
A decade ago, Edmonton's landfill was nearly full and in a search for a new one "we were faced with not-in-my-backyard reaction," he said.
"That forced us to be innovative."
Spotowski said there was a "groundswell" of public support for recycling efforts that started with a blue box program. A $100 million composting facility that transforms sewage into fertilizer opened last year.
To Edmontonians, recycling "just makes sense. Jobs are created and a lot of headaches are solved," he said.
