China has long been the world’s largest purchaser of recyclables. It’s been the principal end-market for most of the post-consumer plastics, paper, and other recyclable materials collected in North America. And they made a recent decision that will be felt around the world, including right here in Victoria, and nobody seems to be talking about it.
As of December 31, 2017, China has implemented the “National Sword” policy, which limits the amount of North American recyclables the country will take by significantly lowering the allowable levels of contamination. Government officials and waste management professionals will be watching closely as markets react; those concerned about the environment will be watching closely as well, and that includes people here in town, and even at Camosun.
Bill Christie has been at Camosun since 1989. He’s been with Facilities Services all along, starting in custodial and working his way up to custodial chargehand, and, in May 2017, he was given the title of supervisor of building operations. Christie and Camosun facilities operation manager Julie Oakley deal with the waste and recycling here at the college.
A lot has changed with regard to waste collection and processing during Christie’s tenure at Camosun. He says that at the time he started and into the early 1990s, all waste went into one bin, which was taken straight to the landfill. According to Christie, a few years later, Camosun shifted to a commingled system made up of one bin for garbage and another for all recyclables. Christie says that system was acceptable for a number of years, but the industry soon realized that the cost burden of sorting was too great. Due to economics, the college has had to adapt.
There have been changes mandated by government, as well: Christie says that back in 2010, the CRD started imposing bans on certain materials to extend the life of the Hartland Landfill.
“That’s the number-one motivator behind everything on the island,” says Christie. “That’s the one main landfill for all of the Capital Regional District on the lower portion here… Their incentive is to divert as much material as possible.”
Camosun has dramatically increased its attempts at diverting, but Christie says we have come to a point where the next step is to seriously look at how we handle waste on campus. Christie points to the University of Victoria, which has a transfer station right on campus.
“A lot of their waste goes to one area and gets sorted properly, and they have balers and compactors that reduce the amount of hauling,” says Christie. “My personal opinion—and I am not representing the college—is that to make the next leap, we are going to have to develop something like that. If costs keep going up, we would like to look at having a transfer station at Interurban, because we have the space there. One of our present haulers is putting together some pricing for us to see if it’s a viable option.”
Camosun doesn’t have the manpower to do the separation on campus, according to Christie. He says that Waste Management, the company that takes care of the college’s paper, metal, and plastic, says that there is about 30 to 40 percent contamination in those streams.
“Cascades, which is the company that receives our recycling, has multiple methods in place, such as magnets, different conveyor belts; they separate things by weight,” says Christie. “It’s very high tech, and they are actually able to sort the material out. Sorting isn’t a huge issue. Our biggest issue is in the garbage itself, because 70 to 90 percent of that material does have another stream. It can be composted, or recycled, but right now, we have no system in place; it just goes straight into the garbage.”
Christie says that, ultimately, student tuition covers waste costs. He says that annual waste-management costs are typically around $180,000 to $190,000. A four-yard bin of garbage costs $64 to take away, while a six-yard bin of mixed paper costs $7, according to Christie, who adds that it’s the failure to divert recyclables from waste that is driving up the cost, which is ultimately paid for by the students.
“It is two-fold,” says Christie. “[Sorting waste] would be in their best interest for the planet, and it would help to keep tuition costs down.”
One thing the college has done to try to improve the amount of recyclables going into the garbage is removing garbage cans from classrooms.
“Statistically, if students get up and go to the hallway with the different bins, the motivation to sort is much greater,” says Christie. “These are small steps that do have some impact.”
Camosun Environmental Technology instructor Michael Kory teaches a course at Interurban on waste management and mediation.
“What I do is start out with residuals,” he says, “then air pollution, liquid waste, solid waste—which includes garbage and recycling—and then I go into remediating contaminated sites.”
Kory says that about 25 percent of the course is waste management, which includes compaction, sorting, and recycling.
“I tell my class that just because plastic items or ferrous or aluminum items have a recycling number on them, it doesn’t guarantee that they’ll be recycled,” says Kory. “It’s often much cheaper to make new stuff than it is to recycle. It depends on the commodity value. They might just take the whole batch and throw it in the landfill.”
Kory says that what’s happening around the world that’s influencing China’s decision is that if plastics are contaminated, it can be too expensive to recycle them. Sometimes it goes to the landfill; sometimes the landfill won’t even accept it. The course also discusses alternative measures such as waste-to-energy, the burning of garbage for electrical power or heat generation.
“In places like Germany, they burn all of their garbage,” says Kory. “There is some pre-sorting for metals and things. With the technology in air-pollution control, that could reduce a lot of volume. We are always talking about volume at Hartland Landfill, because space is limited and they estimate it will last until 2048. If we burned a lot of our garbage and we were careful with the air pollution and mitigate that, we could reduce a lot of this and there would be a lot fewer residuals put into the ground.”
Kory says that the new laws in China have effectively closed the doors on much of the waste being imported, but he adds that it’s very early on and things are still changing.
“They have already changed their stance on metals,” says Kory, “because they are a very valuable commodity. They have lifted the ban on ferrous metals, copper, and zinc, and they have reduced the specificity of the contamination standards. Metals are still coming in and the fear of that ban is dissipating a bit.”
The issue is that the Chinese government no longer wants to import plastics or a lot of the other waste that Kory says is contributing to pollution.
“The reality is there is some ideology,” says Kory, “but there is also some economic consideration around the value of commodities. It’s a lot of the hard plastics, which are everywhere—maybe the chair you’re sitting in or the jug your milk is in. They don’t want the high density polyethylene, and as a result of the Chinese ban, it’s going to go into landfills around the world.”
Kory says that our waste problem is tied to our standard of living and population growth; he says that people should be provided with the knowledge they need to purchase more efficiently.
“I think we need to educate people on procurement,” says Kory. “Not only people, but Camosun College, or any large organization for that matter, should be careful about who they are buying from and make sure that they are reducing the amount of packaging as well. Companies should have great recycling infrastructure programs and stewardship for the packaging they use.”
Kory says that we as consumers should be buying things with less packaging.
“Plastic bags are being banned all over the world, for obvious reasons,” he says. “It’s the way we purchase that really dictates all of this. If it can be prevented from getting into the waste stream, we would have less to worry about, as far as recycling.”
Capital Regional District (CRD) senior manager of environmental resource management Russ Smith watches the market closely in order to manage the waste pickup on the south island. (The CRD owns and operates the Hartland Landfill.)
“Things have changed with respect to China receiving recyclable materials,” says Smith, “and basically they are not accepting materials with contamination. Globally, it will be harder to move those materials to market as a result. Most of the recycling that comes from first-world recycling programs has a level of contamination that is beyond what is now acceptable under the new rules.”
According to the CRD, materials picked up through the residential blue box program are typically less contaminated. Recycle BC, a non-profit that manages residential recycling in BC, has been able to maintain both international and domestic markets for recyclables.
“We have the curbside blue box program that is quarterbacked by Recycle BC,” says Smith. “They deal with residential printed paper and packaging. They actually are under contract to use a plastic sort facility on the lower mainland. We are under contract with them to deliver the service, but they pay for the collection of the materials and then the sorting and marketing of the materials.”
Smith says that the commercial waste that isn’t picked up under Recycle BC is having a little bit more difficulty finding markets.
“We used to see residual rates in recycling sorting plants at maybe 10 percent, which means that about 90 percent of the materials collected are getting to market,” says Smith. “We are seeing about double the residuals heading to landfills.”
Smith says that the CRD will keep an eye on that trend and then report back to its board within six months, once they’ve determined the direction of the trend and the likelihood that it will stabilize.
“We will decide whether or not we need to adjust our bylaw and change the way we operate at the landfill, in terms of enforcing bans and potentially redirecting materials,” says Smith. “We want to ensure that we are incenting the right environmental behaviour.”
The issue of solid waste management recently outgrew the existing staff numbers here at Camosun, and in November of 2017 Oakley became the college’s facilities operations manager. She oversees the custodial and grounds teams, which are responsible for collecting waste on both campuses and taking it to bins for pick-up. Camosun deals with two third-party contractors that collect waste and recycling from the college.
“Waste Management will pick up twice a week,” says Oakley, “and they are picking up mixed paper, mixed containers and garbage. I can tell you that of the recyclables, 23 percent of what they are collecting is contamination. Luckily for us, our waste goes to Cascades via Waste Management, and they are doing some further sorting, so they are pulling out the garbage so that everything that is recyclable is making it into the recycling stream.”
According to Oakley, Refuse, the other regular collector, handles compost, soft plastics, and styrofoam, which is stockpiled for pick-up. Oakley says that Camosun also has a program with the Electronic Products Recycling Association, which collects the school’s used electronics.
Recently, Camosun’s Sustainability department (part of Ancillary Services) ran some workshops here at the college, and Oakley says they are realigning the strategic plan for sustainability with Camosun’s strategic plan. The four areas of focus for the sustainability workshops are waste, food, energy, and transportation. Oakley says that the workshops will likely lead to several initiatives, and one of them will be to do regular tracking and reporting of Camosun’s waste diversion.
“[The college] is at about a 35 percent diversion rate, maybe 32 percent,” says Oakley. “That means, of our waste, 35 percent is diverted to a recycling stream. That would include compost, plastics, mixed paper, styrofoam, and soft plastics. There are other things that we’ve been diverting that are not in that calculation, like wood and metal scraps from the trades programs.”
Waste collection is documented at Camosun, and, according to Oakley, most of the classroom buildings have a 35-percent diversion rate. She says a major breakdown can be seen when you look at the buildings with food services in them, which are down at a 15-percent diversion rate.
“The back of house is doing a good job,” Oakley says. “The problem is with the people eating in the cafeteria. The garbage collection within the cafeteria, where people aren’t paying attention to where they are putting their garbage… Everything is going into the garbage and we are only seeing a 15 percent diversion rate, as opposed to [people] taking their time to see where things go.”
Improvements have been made over the years, but Oakley says that with Camosun’s food services operations at a 15 percent diversion rate, “it’s like looking at low hanging fruit,” adding that there is a real opportunity for improvement. There is signage at every waste station, but the difficulty, says Oakley, is in trying to train 20,000 students that are turning over every two to three years.
“There are options for improvement there, because there is a large volume coming through those facilities,” says Oakley. “We could do something similar to what Hillside [Centre] does, where you bring your tray to a central area and don’t throw anything away. Their team will take care of all of the sorting. They have control over it and train people who put everything in the right spot. There would be a cost impact. [At Lansdowne] we are under contract with Aramark until 2021, so that would be our opportunity to review the practices and update it. Or we could bite the bullet at the college and put a custodial staff member in there to take trays and sort garbage.”
Camosun director of food and catering services Donna Burger agrees that a centralized area for waste disposal is not a bad idea, but she points out there’s a problem: a lack of trays for students to transport their items on. The college has chosen to have the Lansdowne cafeteria—which Burger is in charge of—be trayless. But there’s a positive side to that: Burger says a trayless system saves a lot of water and chemicals from going into the wastewater stream, as they don’t have to wash the trays.
“If you go into the Hillside model,” says Burger, “you’re going to add trays to it. It is something to think about. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t work with that model, but we gain some and we lose some. Would that be a good model for this cafeteria? It might, and that might be something worth pursuing, but it is not going to solve our problem at the college.”
Burger says that only about 30 percent of people stay in the cafeteria to eat their meal; the rest leave with their food.
“We can do our part by making what we send them away with compostable or, at the very least, recyclable,” says Burger. “We use compostable forks, knives, and spoons, for instance. We only buy PET plastics [polyethylene terephthalate plastics, which are easily recyclable]. We have found a company that does compostable sandwich containers for take-out. We haven’t found compostable cups, but we use the PET plastics for those.”
While a designated sorting service might work in the food-service area, Burger says that with 70 percent of customers taking their food with them, she doesn’t think it would be an overall solution.
“I think the biggest issue with our waste and recycling is the fact that it’s not sorted,” says Burger. “Ultimately, it’s the responsibility of the users to make sure that they sort it properly. We make it as easy as we can in the garbage area. You will hear our cashiers tell customers that the cutlery is compostable. We have tried signage, but that doesn’t work. I think as a society we have stopped looking at it.”
Camosun College Economics, Statistics, and University Transfer Business instructor Becky Mason sits on Camosun’s Environmental Sustainability Council; Mason says that the college used to pay Waste Management to come in once a year for 24 hours at each campus and weigh, sort, and categorize all of the garbage and project from that what the college would produce in one year.
“Roughly 90 percent of what we produce is recyclable,” Mason says. “Historically, our actual diversion rate has not gone above 40 percent, so there is a lot of room for growth. We should be throwing almost nothing away.”
Mason has been taking students to the Hartland Landfill for about 10 years. Every semester she brings a microeconomics class to see the landfill as part of their studies on the economic side of waste management. Mason says that they always have extra space on the bus, so over the years a number of administrators from the college have also gone on the trip. (This year, Julie Oakley and Bill Christie came along.)
“The trip is quite eye-opening for students to be there and see where the garbage goes. The problem that is hard to get past is for an individual person thinking, ‘What’s one more coffee cup?’ It isn’t until you see it all added up that you can really appreciate the importance of the problem.When the students come back from the trip, they are provided with the waste audit, and then their assignment is to tie what they learn at the landfill to the problem we have at the college and use economic theory to make suggestions. The bottom line is, how can we get that 40 percent up to 90 percent?”
One of the biggest challenges for Camosun College’s waste management team is dealing with the waste in food service areas. The college is taking a proactive and systematic approach in order to find solutions.
Culinary Arts chair Steve Walker-Duncan has been working at Camosun since 2003; he says that in the Culinary Arts program, instructors are working with students to reduce waste production from day one.
“From a programming perspective,” says Walker-Duncan, “one of the key parts is minimizing waste; everything from ordering the proper ingredients to maintaining good handling of those ingredients through the entire process. From ordering to the actual service, and perhaps with leftovers, and if there is a waste component, then that waste is dealt with appropriately by composting.”
Walker-Duncan says that all of the organic waste produced, including paper towels and cotton string, goes into composting bins. The bins are picked up weekly by Refuse, which creates nutrient-rich compost for the marketplace. He says the department hopes to further improve the composting program, which he says could be an asset to the college. The Culinary Arts department is currently teaming up with the Employment Training and Preparation program to build a self-contained and sustainable composting program on campus.
“They have some greenhouses,” says Walker-Duncan, “and they produce microgreens and salad greens for us here at the Culinary Arts department. They are doing some worm composting on a very small scale. That is their own program, but we are certainly looking at ways that we can collaborate more effectively so that, ideally, we can provide the material for compost. It can be composted, they can use it for growing, and then we can close the loop and use those grown products for the culinary program.”
Walker-Duncan says that there is a proposal in through the President’s Creativity and Innovation Fund for a viability study on a composting digester here on campus.
“As part of a pilot, the Culinary Arts program would be the main donor of the organic material,” says Walker-Duncan. “Hopefully, with a successful pilot, it could be rolled out to incorporate other areas of the college. Ultimately, we would like to see as much, if not all, of our organic material processed here on site and then utilized in our horticulture and farming programs.”
The project would then be used as the basis for studies done by Mason’s economics students “to understand the impacts of the food waste supply chain and the related costs and benefits of composting on campus instead of sending food waste off site,” she says.
Walker-Duncan says that one of the biggest challenges in waste reduction is in keeping packaging and utensils out of the landfill.
“Everything we are using, from a packaging perspective, we are moving more into compostable and recyclable materials,” he says. “We have pretty much phased out plastic straws and we are utilizing a plant-based cup, which is compostable. We’re using wooden stir sticks instead of the plastic ones. We’re moving into compostable clamshells as opposed to the styrofoam ones.”
As it currently stands, there is an added cost; Walker-Duncan says that it’s about double for the compostable packaging and utensils. He says that the program is absorbing as much of that cost as it can, but ultimately it will end up on the consumer.
“We’re hoping that the costs will go down as they become more common,” he says. “We’re seeing that over the last few years, particularly the paper products. The clamshells and the take-out boxes in particular are not rising in cost; they’re maintaining while costs increase elsewhere. In effect, they are going down.”
Camosun manager of campus sustainability Maria Bremner says that in September the college started to refresh its sustainability plan.
“The first step was to launch surveys with students and staff to see what was important to them,” Bremner says, “because we wanted the plan to reflect the interests and needs of the community. We had over 1,700 students respond to the survey.”
On the survey, students could choose between four areas of environmental concern; Bremner says waste came out on top, being chosen first by 49 percent of students surveyed. She says that the college recently had an action-planning session where they focused on identifying their goals and establishing recommended actions for the next three years.
“We are going to move forward by presenting that plan to the college executives,” she says.
Nothing is solidified yet, but Bremner says she is quite excited about some of the initiatives Camosun is zeroing in on. One of those is how the college will track and audit its waste; if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. The college has done spot audits over the years, but it wants to introduce a more formal system that will involve students in the waste-management classes, which will be an exciting learning opportunity for them.
“I feel that everybody at the college wants to do the right thing,” says Bremner. “I’m inspired by the people I work with, and there is a will and a desire to have the college functioning in the most sustainable way we can. It’s a great opportunity for the students to get involved. They value the work that we have done to get to where we are, but a part of my job is to work with Facilities to bring the waste numbers to the students and show them why it’s important.”
There are programs that actually address sorting, but Bremner says it’s unrealistic to incorporate it into curriculum across the board.
“Some ideas came up in the action-planning sessions for ways that we can engage students,” says Bremner. “We talked about a zero-waste challenge, or other contests and initiatives that let people know it’s important in a way that isn’t academic, because students have enough pressures. We have people from different backgrounds and even different municipalities that have different recycling protocol. We need to convey to people that this is an important priority for the college and they have a role in it.”
It’s early in the talks, but Bremner says that there are several ideas and initiatives that are going to be put forward.
“We talked about a transfer station,” says Bremner, “and the feasibility study on the biodigester at Interurban was talked about.”
Bremner says the college is looking for a positive way to engage students, rather than embedding more guilt in the psyche of students.
“We all have to have a sense of responsibility for how we tread on the earth, but do it in a positive way,” says Bremner. “Look at how we can do things differently to create a positive footprint versus a negative footprint.”
Walking through the courtyard at Lansdowne Campus this morning, I finished the last sip of my lukewarm coffee. I pulled the lid off to toss the the pieces into the appropriate bins so they could be shipped off to a sorting facility and, eventually, get recycled.
This has been a morning ritual for as long as I can remember. Hundreds of times in the past, I thought nothing of it, because it would soon be taken away by custodial staff, and my garbage would be someone else’s problem.
Today, however, I stopped and took the time to look at the contents of the bins. The bins were labelled clearly on their lids, but the contents were indistinguishable. All three containers had paper, returnable bottles, and coffee cups.
I thought about China’s decision, and about taking the extra moment to put recyclables in their proper place, and thought about how today, it’s reaching a crisis point because we’re not taking the time to do these simple tasks. Hopefully the next time a student writes a story like this for Nexus and looks through some recycling bins, they see something a whole lot different than what I saw today.