Province needs to do more than bury the garbage

There’s no place to hide the growing heaps of nasty plastic garbage, but a dump off the Walton Woods Road is apparently as good a place as any to bury it.

Recently, Nova Scotia’s Environment Minister Iain Rankin gave Halifax permission to dump its excess plastic rubbish at GFL’S landfill, located at the rural site in eastern West Hants, for up to six months.

The minister is caught between a local rock and global hard place because China isn’t willing to take our crap anymore, leaving municipal waste systems across the province with mounting piles of plastic grocery bags and the like.

Thus far, only HRM has been granted the exemption from provincial regulations that forbid disposal of recyclable plastics in a landfill. Later this week, the minister meets with folks described improbably as solid waste chairs to try to come up with a more permanent plan to rid Nova Scotia of the rubbish.

Rankin and the municipal officials will have to think globally as they attempt to act locally, because China’s decision left reeking mounds of plastic in more unwelcome backyards that Nova Scotia’s. And, as big as the piles of so-called film plastic are in Nova Scotia, they’re barely the tip the world’s massive plastic trash iceberg.

Nova Scotia’s minister said the six-month exemption granted to HRM won’t be extended. That’s a promise he may come to regret, unless the regional municipality and Nova Scotia’s other landfill operators can find a willing recipient of the refuse, or the province steps up with a longer-term fix.

The stuff can be recycled, but that’s not financially feasible anywhere a living wage is paid. It’s cheaper to make new plastic from petroleum.

Nova Scotia has a resident expert living in Canning. Doug Hickman is a waste management consultant who’s helped more than 50 nations set up recycling and disposal systems, so maybe the minister should listen to Doug when he says there’s a solution, but no quick fix.

Plastic is among the world’s most pervasive and permanent trash. There’s 320 million tonnes of it consumed but not devoured every year. An estimated 13 million tonnes of that finds its way into the oceans, causing scientists to fear that, by volume, there will be more plastic than fish in the sea in about 30 years.

There’s plenty of research and development going on to produce bioplastic, Oxo-biodegradable plastic and other substitutes, but the economics remain in favour of nearly indestructible petroleumbased plastics.

In Nova Scotia, municipalities want the province will step up with a coordinated response, so they’re not each left to their own limited resources. Rankin suggested over the weekend that the provincial government is willing to look at all options.

The municipalities flagged the issue with the province six months ago, but until the mounds of plastic bags were visible from TV sets, computer screens and newspaper pages, the province was unmoved.

The politics of plastic trash may be fraught, but barring the emergence of a yet undetected destination, a singular provincial response is required.

Burying the problem with the trash is not a solution, but there are at least a couple to choose from.

One is to ban the stuff outright, but that’s tough for one little jurisdiction to pull off. Film plastic includes lots of grocery and other shopping bags, but there are other sources like plastic product wraps, too. So, by banning the plastic wrap, Nova Scotia might be banning the product.

Extended producer responsibility (EPR), like the fee charged on electronics in Nova Scotia, is another option. At the point of purchase, consumers pay a fee that goes back to the source industry along with the used product, which must then be recycled.

Colchester County Mayor Christine Blair has suggested building a gasification plant that could turn plastics into fuel. That’s a viable solution as its already done in other parts of the world, but would take time and money to establish here.

Rankin’s open to the idea, as he says he is to an outright ban or an EPR program, either of which will be dissected for political fallout before they are implemented. So far, the minister is mostly and reasonably pleading with folks to use fewer plastic grocery and shopping bags.

Whatever the answer, this is a time for province to take the lead. Municipalities should not be left holding the bags.