Waste to energy

Did you know your garbage is valuable? 

Metro Vancouver is starting to see the worth in waste. The municipality is looking to build six new waste-to-energy plants in the Lower Mainland in an effort to find a solution to its lack of landfill space. 

Some residents may trash talk the idea of having a facility in their area, but it’s hard to throw away the idea when incinerated garbage can be turned into electricity and steam energy. 

A ton of garbage produces the same amount of energy as a barrel of oil, so burying the one million tons of garbage generated each year by Greater Vancouver residents in a landfill is the same as burying one million barrels of oil. 

And not burning all that garbage means that profits are going up in smoke. 

Burnaby has had a waste-to-energy plant for more than 20 years, where approximately 280 000 tons of garbage are turned into 900,000 tons of steam a year. 

All the energy from that refuse is not refused by BC Hydro which purchases it, along with a nearby paper recycling facility to reduce its use of fossil fuels. This of course doesn’t mean that residents should produce more garbage. 

On the contrary, the Region will continue to encourage recycling. Simply by composting organic matter, the amount of garbage can be reduced by 40 percent. 

Metro Vancouver is proving that seeing garbage as a resource would definitely not be a waste of time.