Nobody likes to be thought of as a garbage factory but — like it or not — that is what cities have always been and will continue to be, despite our sense of sophisticated entitlement. While only the most narrow-minded would dismiss the enormous cultural, social and economic contribution of the city to human development, there is a sobering reminder of the cost in the fact that we are also perceived as perpetual-motion refuse machines in the surrounding hinterlands to which we increasingly export our rubbish while importing their resources and young people.

In Vancouver, for example, just over 600,000 inhabitants generated 557,334 tonnes of waste last year. Sort that into commercial, demolition and residential waste and it turns out that the average citizen produces about half a tonne of garbage a year. Put another way — because fooling around with dimensional statistics is always fun — some amusing calculations for converting residential waste to volume that were developed in California show Vancouverites produce roughly enough garbage to bury Library Square to the depth of a 37 storey building, which is about four times higher than the present library. Our garbage tower would rank as the 22nd tallest building in the city. That’s just for 2013. Add another one, likely taller, each year.

Statistics Canada reports that between 2001 and 2006, population growth in the country’s 33 main metropolitan areas grew at a rate which was seven times that for small towns and rural areas. Most Canadians now live in just six of those metropolitan areas — 10 million of us in the regions surrounding Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. And even though there have been dramatic improvements in recapturing both materials for recycling and for energy from the urban garbage stream, the actual volume is obviously going to continue to be a problem with which we must wrestle.

If we are living examples of American writer Mason Cooley’s aphorism that human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage, it behooves us all to stop thinking about garbage simply as something useless to throw away. Start thinking about it instead as a resource we can exploit for all kinds of added value. In fairness, municipal waste managers, particularly across the Metro Vancouver region but in many other cities, too, have been among the most progressive thinkers in this. They have launched campaigns urging us to reuse, recycle and repurpose while developing practical and pragmatic ways to extract genuine economic value from the garbage stream.

As a result, we have effective programs for diverting organic waste — from kitchen scraps to lawn cuttings into compost — which can be reinvested in the natural landscape. Across Canada, more than 60 facilities — including here — now recover methane gas from landfills. Not only is gas used to generate energy, the extraction process reduces greenhouse emissions from urban landfills equivalent to almost seven million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. In Edmonton, a new plant converts municipal garbage to cleaner-burning biofuels to further reduce carbon footprints. Others mine discarded computer and electronic parts. And so on.

The success of these strategies has been remarkable. In Vancouver, for example, per capita waste generation has been trending downward with satisfying consistency since 2007. Overall, the diversion rate for municipal waste has improved from 37 per cent in 1994 to almost 60 per cent in 2014.

A CHEMICAL firm has said it will not be dishing out an energy cash bonanza to Runcorn residents after the company pledged to share 6% of its shale gas revenues with households in ‘fracking’ zones.

Ineos said an environmental fund is already in place whereby Halton Borough Council receives 60p of public project cash per ton of fuel burned in the incinerator – something that could be worth about £500,000 a year.

A company spokesman commented after the Weekly News asked it whether the inhabitants of Weston Point and further afield could expect a windfall funded by the energy-from-waste plant.

Last week Ineos announced a ‘£2.5bn shale gas giveaway’ to residents living in 100 sqkm areas where the company fracks.

Jim Ratcliffe, Ineos chairman, said the payments would give neighbourhoods ‘a real stake’ in the project.

Backers of fracking say the process could drive down energy prices, boost the economy and slash reliance on supplies from unstable regions of the worlds.

Critics say it will damage the environment, cause earthquakes, accelerate climate change and benefit a tiny few.

Incinerator waste has been promoted as a renewable source of power and a means to secure the future of the Runcorn chemical works while slashing the amount of waste going to landfill, but it too has sparked controversy from those who claim the Weston Point plant is too big, causes too much pollution, noise and bad smells.

An Ineos spokesman said: “There is already an environmental fund in place for the Runcorn EfW facility, which was agreed as part of the planning process.

“Ineos’s approach on shale gas applies to individuals and communities that would be situated directly above horizontal gas wells.

“It would not be appropriate to apply this to all projects, including Ineos’s share of the Runcorn EfW facility.”

RUBBISH disposal is a lucrative business in urban areas, so much so that we have companies that are eager to propose incinerators to help us deal with the problem.

After all, Japan and Germany are big-time users of this technology, so it has to be good right?

In 2004, the Kuantan Municipal Council built an incinerator for research and development purpose.

That incinerator design consumed about 120 litres of diesel to incinerate only one tonne of waste, due to the high water content of local waste.

That is essentially the difference between Japan and us when it comes to incinerator technology — Japan does not waste good diesel to burn rubbish like we would.

In order to utilise this technology properly, we really need to separate our rubbish first. Otherwise, burning wet rubbish requires adding fuel to the waste and that means we are burning money to dispose of waste.

It should be no problem to force Malaysians to start separating their rubbish, as a provision has been included under the Solid Waste and Public Cleansing Management Act for this purpose.

The clause just has not been activated by the Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Minister.

However, rubbish separation is not just a responsibility for households but markets, restaurants, factories, shopping malls and office towers too.

Most businesses would not have the means to enforce rubbish separation, and there is that tricky issue about being held responsible for the mess if someone decides to dump unsorted rubbish into your wastebin.

This is a headache our Government will have no answer for because there are only so many things laws can deal with.

People’s attitudes need to be changed for rubbish separation to work, and we just do not have that sort of civic consciousness in our society.

So, we have a problem separating rubbish at source but our Government is still keen on incinerators. Will that be a problem?

Well, we already have several incinerators operating in Malaysia — located in Langkawi, Pangkor, Tioman, Labuan and Cameron Highlands, to name a few.

According to a Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) study on incinerators done in 2013, incinerators “had failed due to faulty design, improper operation, poor maintenance, high diesel usage and waste characteristics, due to high moisture content of 60% to 70%.”

The existing incinerator operators know this is a huge problem and seek to mitigate it by separating the rubbish as best they can.

For example, the Pangkor incinerator operator segregates moist food waste and dispose of it at an adjacent landfill but the process is not perfect as the waste is already mixed by the time it gets to the incinerator.

This in turn causes the burning to be imperfect and smog is released into the air.

When it comes to incinerators in general, of equal concern is the residual ash from the burning process with possible by-products of toxins depending on what sort of rubbish got burnt (we would not know since rubbish segregation does not happen here). Does our Government have a programme to store and contain such waste in a safe area?

The same UKM study actually notes the following: “research has shown that in communities where incinerator plants are built, its long-term effects come in the form of reproductive dysfunction, neurological damage and other health effects are known to occur at very low exposures to many of the metals, and other pollutants released by incineration facilities.”

Are the authorities and all the proponents for incinerators really sure this sort of technology is suitable for the Klang Valley given the problem we have of even separating and sorting our rubbish?

What do we do when the incinerator has reached its capacity and unable to cater to escalating waste due to population growth?

Do we build more incinerators or do we advocate a sustainable method of reducing waste through Zero Waste Management when the amount of waste is reduced significantly and substantially?

There are private companies that are eager to explore such methods of turning our waste into useful products if they are given the chance.

Example technology includes anaerobic digestion that is a simple, natural breakdown of organic matter, which produces biogas — a fuel that can be burned to produce both heat and electricity — and methane, a substance that can be used as vehicle fuel.

The process produces a by-product called digestate, which can be used as fertiliser as it is rich in nutrients.

Indeed a whole new industry can be spawned from such recycling initiatives, which can be equally lucrative, as the by-products are actually useful.

But such possibilities are being overlooked in favour of implementing incinerator technology where we will be using fuel to burn away the rubbish.

Whatever it is, so long as the process is not looked at in detail and the issues I have highlighted not resolved, our Government can expect to face resistance from each and every resident group where the project is proposed next.

> Mak Khuin Weng cannot afford to send our politicians overseas for ‘lawatan sambil belajar’ trips, so he hopes this article would suffice in terms of his advocacy for recycling.

Authorities unveiled a new mobile incinerator that will be used to destroy unwanted or expired prescription pills in the future.

State Police Lt. Michael Baylous, Putnam Sheriff Steve Deweese and U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin hoisted large orange buckets filled to the brim with a mixed assortment of pills and dumped them, one by one, into the smoking maw of the black incinerator Tuesday afternoon at the Putnam County Courthouse in Winfield.

The pills were from the 2.5 tons collected Saturday as part of the National Prescription Drug Take Back Day.

Saturday’s event was the last event sponsored by the Drug Enforcement Administration, Goodwin said. The federal agency has conducted take-back days since 2010 because there weren’t any rules on properly disposing of unwanted or expired medications.

The DEA began working toward safe disposal rules after the first take-back day. The final rule was issued this year, allowing DEA-registered hospitals, pharmacies, long-term care facilities and others dealing in pharmaceuticals to modify their registrations to become authorized collection sites, according to the DEA’s website. Law enforcement agencies also may continue collecting pills.

Goodwin said when the events began there were no standalone drop boxes for medications. Now, both Kanawha and Putnam sheriff’s offices operate collection sites in Charleston and Winfield.

“We’ll continue on,” Deweese said. “We’ll support ourselves on it.”

The Putnam Sheriff’s Office collected some 221 pounds of medications in the last event.

Goodwin said the five mobile incinerator units were purchased with funds from the 2004 settlement with Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin…

The American-owned firm behind the Parc Adfer waste treatment facility has submitted its planning application to Flintshire County Council.

Energy-from-waste specialist Wheelabrator has submitted plans for its proposed 200,000 tonnes per year capacity incineration plant on the edge of Deeside industrial estate.

The company was named as the preferred bidder for a 25 year contract to treat household waste on behalf of North Wales Residual Waste Treatment Project (NWRWTP) – the five council partnership which includes Flintshire, Isle of Anglesey, Conwy, Denbighshire and Gwynedd.

The firm hopes that planning consent could be granted during the first half of 2015, allowing construction work to commence late in the year.

If successful Wheelabrator expect the facility to be operational by 2018, the site will the then supply waste heat through steam pipes to nearby industrial or commercial users, as well as incinerate tonnes of household waste, diverting it from landfill sites.

According to the five councils, the facility will help them towards meeting the Welsh Government target to recycle 70% of waste by 2025.

Non-Partisan Association mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe is trash talking political rival Vision Vancouver for apparently doing nothing to stop the building of a new garbage incinerator in Metro Vancouver.

“[Mayor Gregor Robertson’s] plan to build an incinerator without community consultation, without transparency and without actual proven technology is an attack on Vancouver,” LaPointe said at a news conference Thursday.

But the fact is the mayor and Vision Vancouver are staunchly opposed to an incinerator and have made that position very clear to Metro Vancouver, the organization that will decide sometime in 2015 how and where to deal with the region’s garbage.

“We are completely opposed to incineration… it’s great that [the NPA] now also seems to share that position,” Coun. Andrea Reimer said Thursday, adding it’s “frustrating” that the NPA hasn’t come out with any new policies.

Council voted in 2013 to consider using a piece of property at the foot of Main Street and Kent Avenue South for a waste centre, but only if it meets strict environmental and health criteria.

The city’s website states it “does not support garbage incineration facilities, and would not allow the burning of garbage at the proposed facility under any circumstances.”

One of the technologies the city said it would consider is gasification, which has fewer emissions and converts waste to synthetic natural gas.

But LaPointe is also strongly opposed to gasification in city limits, saying it is an unproven technology that poses environmental and health concerns.

Instead, LaPointe supports unspecified landfill options, recycling options and sorting technologies.

Regardless, Metro Vancouver has not yet chosen where to put a waste plant.

“The NPA believes strongly in fighting to keep our air clean and our citizens healthy, but Vancouver’s waste-to-energy plans are likely to generate more emissions and harmful chemicals into the atmosphere,” LaPointe says. “An incinerator or gasification plant is simply not a green option. There are significant health and environmental challenges with both options.”
He says Gregor Robertson and Vision Vancouver, the supposed defenders of all things “green,” are doing nothing to stop the building of a costly new garbage incinerator in Metro Vancouver and are proposing their own “gasification” plant at Main St and Kent Ave. “They have failed to defend the interests of Vancouverites.”

LaPointe says he and an NPA government will fight the plans no matter where the incinerator might be built, and instead concentrate on ways to increase reducing, reusing and recycling the City’s solid waste.
“The only thing less green than burning or “gasifying” garbage in Vancouver is using fossil fuels to ship it elsewhere for burning. We share our air with the region’s other municipalities.”

LaPointe says fiscal concerns accompany the health and emissions worries. “The construction of a new incinerator represents significant risks for taxpayers,” he says, noting its cost of construction has increased by almost $50 million to the current $517 million estimate. “Vision Vancouver’s failure to address the cost issue again demonstrates its failure to manage the City financially.”

The Burnaby waste-to-energy incinerator, which loses money annually, is expected to lose another $16 million in this year.

LaPointe says Metro Vancouver has publicly identified three potential sites for a solid waste incinerator, while six additional, secret sites are under consideration. The City of Vancouver has also proposed a gasification facility in South Vancouver and that has residents concerned.

Jay Jagpal, NPA Park Board candidate and South Vancouver resident, says: “My community is very concerned about the lack of transparency around this project, with its potential to have an impact on so many people. This is typical behaviour of Vision and Vancouverites deserve better.”

Metro Vancouver’s proposed Bylaw 280, a plan to raise costs on waste disposal, is a key step in subsidizing these plants. An NPA government would work to prevent the bylaw from coming into force.

power plant carbon emissions by 2030.

Early this week, the Obama administration unveiled historic environmental rules to cut carbon pollution from power plants by 30% by 2030. The rules, announced formally by the Environmental Protection Agency, are the first time any president has moved to regulate carbon pollution from power plants – the largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change.

“For the sake of our families’ health and our kids’ future, we have a moral obligation to act on climate,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said. “When we do, we’ll turn risks on climate into business opportunity. We’ll spur innovation and investment, and we’ll build a world-leading clean energy economy.”

The proposed rules also would result in reductions in particle pollutions, nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide by more than 25 percent, which EPA officials say would prevent in 6,600 premature deaths and 150,000 asthma attacks in children per year once fully implemented. The health improvements also would result in the avoidance of 490,000 missed work or school days, which the EPA says equals savings of $93 billion a year.

The proposal, although promoted fully by the president and Democratic leadership in Congress, ran into immediate opposition from business lobbies, Republicans in Congress and some Democrats facing tough election battles. The coal industry – which will be hit hardest by the new rules – said the regulations would hurt the economy and lead to power outages.

“If these rules are allowed to go into effect, the administration, for all intents and purposes, is creating America’s next energy crisis,” the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity said.

The problem is, the climate crisis will wipe us all out if we don’t do something big about it. What sort of world do we want our children to live in, or their children, or their children’s children? And for that matter, when does our planet just become completely unlivable? Will people believe that the time is right for a change then? No one ever said tackling a problem like climate change was going to be easy–it’s going to cost us a lot of money, effort, and yes, in some cases maybe even jobs (in many cases, it will actually create new jobs). But if we ignore it, or if we don’t do enough to combat it, the problem will only get worse. Isn’t the health of our planet more important than money? Than jobs? If we don’t figure something out, then someday money and jobs won’t matter anymore–because we’ll have completely destroyed our home, the place that allows us to live at all. It’s about time the U.S. got on board with climate change reform–especially since we’re one of the largest offenders. So bravo, Mr. Obama. Let’s just hope it’s not too late to make a difference.

Ebola: livestock incinerator imported from Europe to cremate corpses

‘I have never seen this number of bodies before’: Life at an Ebola clinic in Liberia

Scale of Ebola outbreak in Western Africa leaves staff of frontline health agency with grim decisions over who to treat and who to turn away.
Like every other volunteer who serves with Médecins Sans Frontières, Stefan Liljegren joined up to help the sick and destitute. In 15 years with the agency, he has been everywhere from Afghanistan and Kosovo through to South Sudan and East Timor, the hard and often dangerous work compensated for by the knowledge that he is saving lives.
His latest mission, in Ebola-hit Liberia, offers rather less job satisfaction. As field co-ordinator of MSF’s new 160-bed Ebola treatment centre in the capital, Monrovia, one of his tasks is to decide which of the sick people who arrive outside the clinic’s gates should get treatment. Such is the scale of the outbreak that for every 20-30 new patients the clinic admits each day, the same number are often turned away – despite the likelihood that they will go home and infect their relatives
“This is by far the most difficult challenge that I have ever faced,” the 44-year-old Swede told The Telegraph during a brief break from his work in the sweltering humidity of Liberia’s monsoon season. “Every day I have been faced with impossible choices, and decisions that are inhuman to make. Having to tell someone that they can’t come in when they are screaming and begging to do so is an indescribable feeling, especially when you know they may go back to families who might well then get sick themselves.”
Outside the clinic an hour earlier, a grisly scene demonstrated Mr Liljegren’s point. Resting face down in the mud was the body of Dauda Konneh, 42. He had been lying there dead since daybreak.
“He was vomiting a lot and had symptoms like Ebola, so we put him in a pick-up truck and took him here for treatment,” said one young man outside. “When we got here last night, he was still alive, but the clinic would not accept him. He died at dawn today.”
When The Telegraph mentions this to Mr Liljegren, he nods. Having dead or dying patients outside the clinic overnight is “a regular occurrence,” he says. The reason being that once night falls, the hospital does not admit anyone: handling Ebola patients requires extreme care at the best of times, and it would be dangerous to do so in the dark.
The task of removing Mr Konneh’s body falls to Stephen Rowden, a British MSF volunteer from Danbury, Essex, who leads a team in charge of the safe removal of corpses, which are sprayed with chlorine-based disinfectant first. “When I started it was maybe a body every two days, now it is daily and sometimes up to five a day,” said Mr Rowden, 55. “I have never seen this amount of bodies before. It sounds callous, but you just have to switch off emotionally.”
No amount of “switching off”, though, spares the MSF staff from the wider scale of the fatalities around them. The clinic, one of three now operating in Monrovia, has seen 350 deaths in the last month alone. Since all infected bodies have to be burned, the casualties have exceeded the ability of Monrovia’s local crematorium to cope. MSF has had to import an incinerator from Europe – normally used for livestock – to assist. For an aid agency that prides itself on triumphing in even the most difficult operating circumstances, it is a depressing reminder of how far there is to go.
The challenges facing the MSF clinic are in turn a snapshot of the wider outbreak now engulfing West Africa. On Tuesday, a World Health Organisation study warned that the number of Ebola cases – currently topping 5,000 – could reach hundreds of thousands by January unless the aid operation was drastically increased.
Nowhere is the problem more acute than in Liberia, where 40 per cent of all the deaths have taken place, and where the government health service – already badly damaged by the 1989-2003 civil war – has been paralysed by Ebola infections among its own staff. In coming weeks, a 3,000-strong US military mission will arrive in Monrovia to build 17 more Ebola treatment clinics. But MSF, which worked in Liberia throughout the civil war, says the situation is already spiraling out of control.
Inside the MSF clinic in Monrovia, those patients fortunate enough to get through the gates are admitted to rows of large white treatment tents. The clinic is designed so that only staff clad in the yellow high protective gear can enter the “high risk” wards, where those with advanced stages of the virus are treated.
In the nurses’ area, meanwhile, a pair of paperwork folders hung next to the door describe the patients’ only possible outcomes. One has a set of forms marked “Discharge”, given to the few who manage to fight the virus off. The other has a set of forms marked “Death Certificate”. Right now, the latter is used between 70 and 80 per cent of the time.
In another section, patients who have tested positive but are not yet acutely ill congregate in an open air living room, where they can chat to each other, do exercises, and play board games.
One patient, Foofee Sheriff, 54, tells how he became infected after attending the funeral of his brother, who died recently. “We did not touch my brother’s body during the burial, we used plastic bags on our hands to make sure that didn’t happen,” he insists. “But eight days after I started feeling sick.”
Mr Sheriff’s claim not to know how he became infected is typical. It may be that he genuinely does not know. Or it may be that he failed to take adequate precautions at his brother’s funeral but does not wish to admit it.
Either way, it makes it all the harder for the medical staff to establish patients’ so-called “contract traces”, which, in an ideal world, identify exactly who else might have been infected. This would also be useful in the case of Mr Konneh, who, according to the man who brought him in, worked for Irish aid agency Concern, which itself has been conducting a public health campaign about how to avoid getting Ebola.
Alerted by The Telegraph the following day, Concern confirmed that Mr Konneh, a father-of-two, did indeed work for them, although they believe he may have died from an existing medical condition which took a turn for the worse in the past ten days. Such is Ebola’s grip on Liberia, however, that right now, any sudden illness is feared to be the virus – hence Mr Konneh’s attempt to reach the clinic. The young man adds that Mr Konneh moved between two different households while sick, and that the occupants of both houses are “now very worried”.
As too is Mr Liljegren, for whom there is simply no telling how many more desperate people may soon be pleading outside his clinic’s gates. “It gets worse by the day,” he says. “How much worse it will it get? I have no idea.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11118025/I-have-never-seen-this-number-of-bodies-before-Life-at-an-Ebola-clinic-in-Liberia.html