Plastic problems mount in HRM
A mountain of plastic is causing headaches for the Halifax Regional Municipality and other Nova Scotia jurisdictions.
“These come in pretty huge pallets that we normally ship over to China,” said Coun. Tony Mancini, chairman of the city’s environment and sustainability committee. “Since we got notice that they (China) weren’t going to take it anymore, we’ve been stockpiling it. The concern is the space – there is actually one facility in the province, not ours, where one of the (plastic) piles caught fire and caused a big problem.”
The big provincewide problem came to light in July, when China told the World Trade Organization that it would cease to accept shipments of waste film plastics, including shopping bags, plastic wraps and other materials by Dec. 31 because of environmental and health concerns.
“Right now, we’ve asked the province if we can at least, on a temporary basis, landfill the stockpile of plastics we have right now,” he said. “It’s not a great solution, we don’t want to do that, but we’ve run out of space.”
Collected recyclables in HRM are processed and marketed by Miller Waste Systems at the cityowned facility in Bayers Lake. A staff report presented to the environment and sustainability committee in October said that under the existing contract, Miller Waste is paid $125 per tonne to process the recyclables and receives 25 per cent of the revenue. The remaining revenue goes to the city.
Matt Keliher, HRM’s solid waste manager, could not be reached Wednesday. Nearly a month ago he told media that 80 per cent or more of the city’s recyclables had been shipped to China in recent years. He said the city scrambled to find recycling alternatives for its curbside collections after the Chinese announcement and was successful for almost all other waste materials but the film plastics.
The Chinese decision is also a financial hit for HRM. The staff report said that in 2016-17, HRM’s sale of recyclable material to China was $1,660,000 and the city’s total recycling revenues in the same period were $2,166,000.
Mancini said the plastics problem plagues all of the province’s municipalities. He and the heads of the other similar municipal committees have set up a meeting with Iain Rankin, the provincial environment minister, for Jan. 11 to discuss the issue.
An Environment Department spokeswoman said Wednesday that the department is aware of the challenges created by the Chinese import restrictions.
“We are reviewing the matter,” Chrissy Matheson said, adding that the province has received a request from HRM to dispose of plastics in the landfill.
“We will be making a decision on that soon,” Matheson said.
“The department would consider requests from other approval holders if they are received.”
The HRM staff report said that minimal to no markets are available in North America and that Miller had been exploring opportunities for alternative uses, such as cement kiln fuel, instead of landfilling the plastics.