Technology vs. trucking to Michigan
Paul Moloney
The Toronto Star
4 June 2003
The city of Toronto has started a worldwide search for garbage disposal technologies to put an end to trucking the waste to a Michigan landfill.
About 150 companies already have contacted the city about the initiative, which kicked off this week with a request for information about advanced thermal technologies and other means to get rid of solid waste.
The processes – which go by such names as gasification, pyrolysis, plasma discharge and depolymerization – are intended to help the city reach its goal of diverting all waste from
landfills by 2010.
The city currently diverts about 30 per cent of waste from landfills.
“We just want a technology that works, plain and simple,” Councillor Brad Duguid, chair of council’s works committee, said. “This will give us a general idea of what’s out there.”
Toronto is aiming to divert 60 per cent of its waste from landfill by 2006 through recycling, composting of kitchen and yard waste, re-use, waste reduction and diverting hazardous waste to special depots.
That still leaves 40 per cent of the garbage – about 400,000 tonnes a year – to be dealt with. That’s where advanced technologies come into play, said Geoff Rathbone, planning director for the city’s solid waste department.
“It certainly is our goal in the long term to try to find treatment technologies here in the Toronto area rather than continue to cross into Michigan,” Rathbone said.
Duguid said the city will eventually have to tackle the sticky issue of where to build new waste facilities.
“It becomes more controversial when you move from theory into site identification,” he said. “But I think the people of Toronto are committed to going in this direction. We want to deal with our waste responsibly. We want to deal with it in our own backyard.”
