Province, municipalities tackle film plastics issue

The plastic hit the fan in Nova Scotia this month.

Environment Minister Iain Rankin met with solid waste managers and committee heads from around the province on Thursday at Halifax city hall to sort the issue of once-recyclable plastics that municipalities can no longer find a market for.

“Definitely productive,” Rankin said.

“I heard the concerns and ideas from an enthusiastic group on how we might be able to move forward on low-grade plastics.”

The problem began in July when China, which had been importing about half of the world’s recyclables, announced that it would no longer accept film plastics for recycling as of year’s end.

Film plastics include items like plastic shopping bags, the wrap around toilet paper and paper towels, and the wrappings for packages of water bottles, pop bottles and juice cans.

Municipalities were left to scramble to try to secure other markets for the film plastics. In Halifax Regional Municipality, some 30 tonnes of the film plastics stored outside a recycling facility became contaminated and could not be moved to any recycler. The province had already banned such film plastic products from its landfills so a desperate HRM, after requests for the province to temporarily relax the landfill regulation went unanswered, reached a deal with another province to landfill the contaminated plastic.

The Environment Department responded last week with a six-month exemption to allow film plastic from HRM to go to a Nova Scotia landfill.

Coun. Tony Mancini said HRM has not yet taken advantage of the exemption.

“We have not because while we were waiting for that permission we had an issue of a stockpile,” said Mancini, head of the city’s environment and sustainable committee, who attended Thursday’s meeting.

“Our staff found some locations for that in another province. Our objective here is to put less in landfills, not more. That stockpile of plastics became contaminated and then became a danger to be sitting there so we had to get rid of it. Many residents reached out to us offering possible solution

s for our plastics. The community is now really engaged.”

The landfill exemption was extended only to HRM but many other municipalities are facing similar plastic problems.

“We are overwhelmed,” Colchester County solid waste director Wayne Wamboldt said.

He didn’t attend the waste summit in Halifax but Colchester Coun. Tom Taggart brought the county’s problems to the minister.

“This is a last-resort option for HRM,” Rankin said of landfilling plastics.

“Whether they exercise it or not will be up to them. Nobody wants to see these

items in a landfill so I understand they are continuing to look for other markets. We haven’t had any other official requests, other than just today I heard from Colchester so we will consider that, along with any other future requests and we will treat all municipalities fairly.”

Wamboldt said he doesn’t see any option other than landfilling some plastics in the future but he looks ahead to a potential county gasification plant that could process plastics and other waste into fuel.

“If we are fortunate enough to go with a waste-to-energy project, it (film plastic) would make a beautiful feedstock,” Wamboldt said.

“But that would be a couple of years at least. It’s certainly not a solution for the interim.”

But he said if a wasteto-energy project came to fruition in the county, the landfilled plastic could be dug up and recycled into fuel.

“Absolutely, that is our intent. It’s (landfilled plastic) not wasted. We’re just storing energy if we do that.”

In the interim, the Thursday meeting generated consideration for some other solutions.

“We talked about extended producer responsibility,” Mancini said.

“This exists in other provinces. If you look at British Columbia, they have

that in place all across the province.”

The producer responsibility policy mandates that the producer must reduce environmental impact by managing its product across the lifecycle of the pro

duct, from selection and design to the product’s end of life. A grocery store would be responsible for its grocery bags bags through to the end.

Mancini said the ban of plastic bags also came up at the meeting.

“Our residents are interested and we’ve been communicating with the business

community on that,” Mancini said.

“That’s only a small piece of the solution but it’s one that is worthwhile to grab a hold of right now. It was looked at before from a municipal point of view — do we ban plastic bags — and it was turned down. It wasn’t the right time.”

Mancini said this is the right time for creative solutions to the plastic problem

“We’ve led the way across the country on this and we continue to lead the way. Other provinces are catching up, which is good. But here is an opportunity for us, if we can have extended producer responsibility put in place and even the banning of the plastic bags, it will keep us leading the way.”