Toss glass into trash can, not blue box: recycling company
Last Updated: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 | 10:31 AM CT
CBC News
A Winnipeg recycling firm is calling on its clients to put their glass in the trash, arguing that the money spent to reuse glass in the city could be better spent on other waste.
Glass that Winnipeggers throw in their blue boxes ends up at the same place as trash: at the city's Brady Road landfill, where the glass is crushed and used to fill in roads found only at the dump.
Recycled glass sits in piles at Winnipeg's Brady Road landfill.
(CBC/Mychaylo Prystupa)
For that reason, says Kristjan Backman, owner of Phoenix Recycling, it doesn't make sense for his 1,300 office customers to recycle the material. His company collects paper, newsprint, tin and plastic — but not glass.
"When we tell them the glass would be going to the Brady landfill for use in road construction, they're not comfortable with that," Backman told CBC News.
Recycled glass must be sorted by colour and shipped to out-of-province factories to be made into new glass. The closest facilities that could take Winnipeg's recycled glass are in Shakopee, Minn., and Toronto.
Because of the costs involved, glass is too expensive to recycle, which is why it's reused at the landfill — where it's virtually harmless to the environment, Backman said.
"Glass in the landfill is totally inert. It does nothing," Backman said. "It sits there for thousands of years with no serious harm to the environment, whereas there are lots of materials that we throw out that have real significant environmental impact."
Backman says glass in the landfill is inert but other materials that people throw away have significant environmental impact.
(CBC)
Commonly disposed-of items such as batteries, light bulbs and paint contain chemicals and materials harmful to the environment; the city of Winnipeg should divert some of its recycling money to deal with that kind of hazardous waste, he said, instead of glass.
"If we're just going to go through the motions, but not actually make a difference, then we should be doing something else with those dollars," he said.
Options limited
Even the provincial agency that requires Winnipeg to recycle glass says the city should consider new options for the material.
"You're looking at balancing. Is this the best current use? Could they be crushing it and using it in landscaping?" said Mike Fernandez of the Manitoba Product Stewardship Corp.
But so far, no business has come up with a green and profitable use for all the glass.
Randall McQuaker, executive director of non-profit Resource Conservation Manitoba, admits the city may have its hands tied because it's hard to make better use of recycled glass.
"It is one of those things where the cost of actually transporting it can sometimes outweigh the value that's in the material itself," he said.
However, McQuaker said he couldn't support a no-recycling move for glass, because he supports a general move toward a zero-waste society.
City officials say if the recycled glass wasn't used for dump roads, the landfill would have to use gravel for roads, which would require haulage by trucks, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions.
