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Netherlands Waste Management Themed Trade Mission – Day 3
Today saw us leave our hotel in The Hague for a cross country trek to a number of waste management facilities. We visited a hazardous waste processing facility, anaerobic digestion facility and composting/AD technology provider. This blog presents some highlights from various…
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A recycling verification guideline for Ontario
On September 8, 2014, the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) launched a 45-day public consultation period for the TECHNICAL GUIDE: Recycling process, audit and verification Guideline for Ontario. The guideline was initiated by the Ontario Waste Management Association (OWMA) last year…
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Walmart's fund to avoid EPR in North America
A recent online article on the GreenBiz.com website briefly describes the Closed Loop Fund led by Walmart — a consortium of major corporations that also includes Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Keurig Green Mountain and Goldman Sachs. The fund is designed to…
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Call for deposits on Ontario soft drink containers
A highlight of the recent Zero Waste conference in Orillia, Ontario (August 10-11) was discussion of a policy idea for the Ontario government to accelerate the province toward a more sustainable future. The idea was to call on Kathleen Wynne’s…
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COFFEE TALK: Why I'm disappointed in TerraCycle
I love TerraCycle. Really. It’s one of the best sustainability outfits around, and the team is filled to the brim with great ideas. Unfortunately, deciding to help recycle single-use coffee pods isn’t one of them. A lot of what TerraCycle…
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Our upcoming August/September edition
I thought readers might be interested in knowing what’s coming up in the forthcoming August/September 2014 edition of Solid Waste & Recycling magazine. COVER STORY SPOTLIGHT: TERRACYCLE TerraCycle Canada has been making news lately, including announcements in British Columbia…
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Packaging costs NYC taxpayers $600 million
It’s interesting to read about what Americans know or think is happening in Canada with respect to product stewardship or extended producer responsibility (EPR). This online article by Bill Sheehan, Executive Director of UPSTREAM (formerly the Product Policy Institute) recently…
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Modern wastefulness was deliberately designed by industry
A July 9, 2014 article from the Discard Studies Blog caught my attention, thanks to it being forwarded to me by the folks at UPSTREAM (http://upstreampolicy.org). The article deserves reading by anyone in the waste management industry, and especially people crafting…
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The Race to the Bottom Part 2 – Death of a Recycler
Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for? ― Friedrich August von…
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The Race to the Bottom – Part 1
On May 29th 2014 I gave a talk at the Recycling Council of BC’s Zero Waste Conference (which can be downloaded here) about ensuring efficiency and effectiveness under Extended Producer Responsibility. In that presentation I advance the idea that the…