How much more should households pay to expand recycling?

Those are some of the questions being put to Lower Mainland residents as Metro Vancouver embarks on a round of public meetings — including one in Coquitlam next week (see list at right) to help redraw the region’s solid waste management plan.

The main goal is to boost the region’s recycling rate from 52% now to 70% by increased processing of everything from wood and paper to food and plastics that now go to landfills.

Sam Mabberley, operations manager at Urban Woodwaste Recyclers, says much more can be done to divert the flow of wood debris generated by construction and demolition sites and boost recycling in general.

With the region’s Cache Creek landfill slated to close in less than two years, the new plan would also authorize the construction of new waste-to-energy plants in the Lower Mainland by 2015 and allow garbage exports to the U.S. over the short term while they’re built.

“We can do a lot before then,” Mabberley told the first forum in Surrey last week.

He said the region shouldn’t simply use the U.S. as an outlet for garbage and “an excuse to wait until an incinerator is built.”

Surrey forum participants agreed it’s best to build several small waste-to-energy plants even though they may be more expensive than building a single giant one. Many small plants open up the ability to tie the heat they generate into local high-density developments, which could offset normal heating requirements.

Ron Richter, manager at the Metro’s current waste-to-energy plant in Burnaby, said it represents a “tremendous opportunity” to cut the region’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Not everyone is embracing that vision, however.

“I’m not sure that’s right for B.C.,” said Delta Coun. Jeannie Kanakos, one of the forum participants who feared the plants may bind the region to producing garbage for energy rather than eliminating it in the first place.

“To go to waste-to-energy across the board is counterintuitive,” Kanakos said, noting that burning garbage threatens to worsen air pollution.

The perception that waste-to-energy is the same as incineration is one that has confounded the debate, says Metro waste management committee chair Marvin Hunt.

In reality, he said, advanced new technologies with names like gasification and pyrolysis offer ways to reduce garbage to usable components without an oxygen burn and the usual pollutants.

“Ultimately I’m looking at waste as a resource,” Hunt said. “One tonne of municipal solid waste is approximately equivalent to a barrel of oil. Do we really want to bury three million barrels of oil per year?”

Metro officials expect the flow of garbage, even with aggressive recycling, will only continue to increase with the region’s population.

Building waste-to-energy plants and an expanded recycling system is expected to add up to costs in the billions of dollars, and crank up garbage tipping fees across the region.

Belcarra Mayor Ralph Drew said there’s no alternative.

“I don’t want to see huge leaps in taxes,” he said. “But it’s not business as usual any more.”

He said landfills are “not the way to go,” noting even the best ones equipped to capture as much methane as possible still leak and are “bad emitters of greenhouse gases.”

Four meetings are left before the plan is finalized and sent to Victoria for approval.

jnagel@blackpress.ca