Cost reduction, not waste reduction, focus of CRD waste management

In streamlining services and moving to reducing waste, the CRD is looking at ways to cut costs and cut the impact of waste on the environment. But rather than generate policy or a regional campaign that encourages households to reduce waste, the emphasis is on how to collect and process waste efficiently and cost-effectively through contracts with waste collection and disposal vendors.

In May 2021, the CRD Board approved the region’s Solid Waste Management Plan. It was approved by the province in July 2023.

Currently, there are four types of waste management in the CRD: landfill, incineration, recycling and composting. Municipalities across the region differ in their approach to solid waste management service provision for residents. Costs associated with solid waste disposal and diversion programs coordinated by the CRD are funded through utility billing, tipping and user fee revenues at Hartland Landfill, service delivery agreements for stewarded materials, the sale of electricity and the sale of recyclables.

Saanich and Victoria offer integrated waste pick up for single-family homes which is paid for through utility billing. In Victoria, garbage and organic waste is collected from residential properties every two weeks. The Town of Sidney contracts out the collection of its garbage, kitchen organics, and compostable yard and garden waste to Emterra Environmental.

Central Saanich, Langford and Colwood are among regional municipalities that do not provide integrated solid waste collection for residents. Instead, they offer a list of local private garbage collection companies with whom residents can contract directly for pick up. In these municipalities, residents choose from a list of approved service providers, based on their scheduling, pricing and needs.

Through a motion tabled by Coun. Kim Jordisson, Colwood city councillors will consider contracting a single vendor for solid waste management.

“If there's better pricing that we can offer to residents through a single contracted company and logistical considerations with how many trucks that we have garbage in one week on one street, how it impacts the environment and the cost savings, we should look at that.”

Cou. Ian Ward wants to leverage municipal decision-making power and budgets to explore the options.

“The worst-case scenario here is that we spend a little money looking at it and decide that that is not for us,” said Ward. “But I think we owe it to the Colwood residents and taxpayers to explore this because we have that economy of scale.”

There are benefits to contracting single vendors

Municipalities are able to leverage contracts to reduce costs more effectively than individual consumers can when they contract out to a single vendor. When garbage service is internal, municipalities are able to resolve service issues individual residents may have but are unable to resolve when private companies handle their service.

Residents are able to call municipalities directly to find out why particular waste items may not have been picked up on any given day and come to a solution. Municipalities that manage solid waste collection services also have more control over their waste management data and are able to report on their disposal rates and GHG reduction efforts.

As a large municipality, curbside and public realm waste collection programs in the City of Victoria are municipal services provided by city staff. What the city is still trying to navigate is how to reduce waste. It recently received a progress report on Zero Waste Victoria which proposes a new phase that will work to reduce the city's landfilled waste by another 5,700 tonnes per year.

Hartland Landfill received 17.3 tonnes of solid waste in June 2023. That marks a 2.7% increase in waste in the same month from 2022. Capital Daily recently reported that of  the 180K tonnes of waste entering the landfill each year, 45K tonnes, or 25%, comes from the City of Victoria. The CRD has calculated that 402kg(890 lbs) of solid waste is produced per capita per year but has not provided households or businesses the policy or programs to reduce that number.

The CRD link on the Love Food Hate Waste (LFHW) campaign site leads to no specific information on how to reduce household waste or any campaign associated with the program. LFHW Canada is based on a UK behaviour change initiative that helped reduce avoidable food waste by 21%. Construction and reno waste is another big tonnage culprit at Hartland.

While it has hazardous waste guidelines for renovation and demolition waste at Hartland, the CRD has no public Zero Waste program or campaign strategy for developers or contractors.

Reducing the amount of materials in landfills and promoting conditions that make it possible to return raw materials to industries is one of the premises of reducing environmental impacts, contamination and pollution risks and promoting a circular economy in communities.

From a circular economy perspective, municipal waste management is of tremendous relevance because it is the primary means by which communities can implement strategies to reduce and recycle, and designs that facilitate the efficient use of the goods and services generated by the economy over time. In a circular economy, the value of products is maintained for as long as possible. Waste and resource use are minimized, and when a product reaches its end of life, it is used again to create more value.

On its website, the CRD suggests that residents borrow items from friends, neighbours or tool libraries (there is only one in the entire region) and buy things that require less packaging. However, it has never implemented a serious campaign that incentivizes residents to actually reduce household waste. And just how the CRD measures the degree of circularity of the products it ‘recycles’ is unclear. In fact, it's a difficult metric to ascertain in other jurisdictions, according to researchers, not just this one.

The focus in the CRD is on cost reduction but not waste reduction. Zurich, Switzerland’s residents must buy and dispose of their garbage in ​​Zür-Sacks—in a pay-per-toss scheme that puts the onus on individual households to reduce waste and processing costs. There are heavy fines for illegal dumping. In Vienna, the Spittelau incinerator in the heart of the city incinerates more than 2.7Million tonnes of municipal waste each year and heats 15,000 homes there.

These programs are innovative, cost cutting (revenue generating) bold and innovative and have built-in consumer accountability and benefit.

In Victoria, key solid waste management cost considerations still reside at the level of vendor contracts. Apart from increasing general refuse tipping fees at Hartland to $150/tonne and introducing reduced tipping fees for wood, carpet and asphalt shingles, the CRD has done little to hold individual residents and consumers accountable for the waste the region produces.

Despite its aim to reduce waste by one third within a decade, plastics still represent 17.5% of single family household waste and with kitchen organics representing 25% in the CRD. To achieve its aim, policy, infrastructure and consumer habits must all get significant overhauls.

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Correction notice: This article has been updated to reflect that solid waste disposal and diversion programs in the CRD are partly funded by utility billing, and that curbside and public realm waste collection programs in the City of Victoria are municipal services provided by city staff and not contracted to an external vendor.