News
The Board of Directors of the Fraser Valley Regional District (FVRD) voted on Metro Vancouver's Draft Integrated Solid Waste and Resource Management Plan (ISWMRP) at its regular Board meeting June 23. The Board unanimously agreed that it does not support WTE incineration as a viable option for handling residual municipal solid waste.
Metro Vancouver is presently engaged in a Public Consultation process on the draft plan, which ends on July 14, 2010. In addition to initiatives to reduce and divert waste by 2015, the plan proposes a Waste-to-Energy (WTE) strategy to annually incinerate 500,000 tonnes of garbage that will not be recycled, composted or otherwise diverted from households, business and industry. This would be a major step backwards for efforts to achieve Zero Waste.Burning more garbage to generate energy is Metro Vancouver's preferred strategy to dispose of waste per year it says cannot be recycled or diverted. The region's draft solid waste management plan would allow construction of a new garbage incinerator taking up to 500,000 tonnes per year – the rest would go to the existing Burnaby incinerator or be dumped at the Vancouver Landfill in Delta. The second choice is to send the waste to an out-of-region incinerator, such as one proposed on Vancouver Island. The fallback option is to keep sending garbage to a distant dump, likely the Cache Creek landfill.
The FVRD directors are part of a wave of opposition responding in the public consultation process on the draft plan. City of Coquitlam officials have also tabled a report critical of Metro's process, questioning the focus on incineration and casting doubt on estimates of much lower costs.
See Zero-waste BC for more detailed information about this raging debate in the Lower Mainland. See also the video "Speak now or forever hold your breath", below.