Ontario's Compost Pile - Exports Shift to New York

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SUBJECT: Ontario's Compost Pile - Exports Shift to New York

Ref: (A) Toronto 33

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1. (U) Summary: Ontario faces an overflow of kitchen compost, and
has begun sending thousands of tons to New York state for
incineration. The province's Green Bin program has grown so quickly
that it has outstripped the ability of municipalities to process
organic kitchen waste locally, a situation that is expected to
continue into the foreseeable future. Cities such as Toronto are
struggling to ramp-up their processing capacity as they aim to meet
their own waste diversion deadlines -- an integral part of the
province's agreement to phase out municipal trash shipments to
Michigan by the end of 2010. The shipment of organic waste to New
York seems acceptable to all parties for now. Over time, however,
the expected Ontario annual excess of 50,000 or more metric tons by
the end of 2010, much of which will end up in New York, may strain
New Yorkers' patience and generate familiar complaints about foreign
garbage unless the U.S. recipients prepare to proactively make the
case that the organic waste imports work to New York's advantage by
lowering New York power costs and generating local jobs. End
Summary.

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Green Bin Program Saves Green Money
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2. (U) Ontario's Green Bin program was introduced in Toronto in 2002
as a means to reduce the amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) that
was shipped to landfills. Originally pledging 100% MSW diversion by
2010, in 2007 Toronto changed its goal to 70% waste diversion by
2010, which coincides with the province's 2006 commitment to
Michigan to phase out shipments of MSW to that state, following
threats of legislative action by Michigan's Senators (reftel).


3. (U) The province has successfully encouraged other Ontario
municipalities to introduce Green Bin programs. Since 2002, the
other three largest regional municipalities in the Greater Toronto
Area (GTA) - York, Peel, and Durham Regions - all have adopted Green
Bin programs. In fact, most major Ontario cities have them, with
the exception of London, Windsor, and Ottawa. In 2007, Ontario
municipalities collected 251,368 metric tons of kitchen scraps in
green bins, up 30% from a year earlier.


4. (U) Toronto's composting program is the largest-scale program of
its kind in North America. Some 510,000 single-family homes in
Toronto already have access to the city's kitchen composting
program, whereby people can put out organic waste (food scraps,
paper towels, coffee grounds, and other similar waste material)
separately from other garbage and recycling items. According to
City of Toronto officials, 95% of single-family households currently
use the Green Bin program, and organics represent 30% of household
waste. At multi-unit dwellings, Green Bin programs are being
phased-in over 18 months, and all 4,500 apartment and condominium
complexes (490,000 homes) in the city should be included in the
program by 2010, increasing organic waste collection from all
participating Toronto households to 170,000 metric tons annually, up
from about 115,000 metric tons in 2008.


5. (U) In order to encourage Green Bin and recycling compliance,
Toronto began charging single-family homes a waste management fee in
November 2008, whereby trash bins are issued to all city households.
Households receive five additional tags per two-month period, which
allow standard-size bags of non-recyclable garbage to be picked up
at no extra charge. Additional garbage collection costs C$3.10 per
tag/bag, whereas collection of Green Bin organic waste, also known
as source-separated organics (SSO),is free. Garbage bag collection
restrictions have also been introduced elsewhere in the GTA,
including York and Durham.

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But Organic Waste Smells Rotten
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6. (U) Ontario's Green Bin program has grown so quickly that it has
outstripped the ability of municipalities to process the organic
waste locally. Instead, thousands of metric tons of kitchen waste
have been shipped to Covanta Energy, in Niagara Falls, New York, for
incineration. York Region sent nearly 12,000 metric tons of green
bin waste to Covanta between March and August 2008. The
southwestern Ontario city of Guelph, considered a composting
pioneer, has shipped 10,000 metric tons of kitchen waste a year to
Covanta Energy since Guelph closed its own facility in 2006 due to
odor problems and to structural weaknesses at the facility's
building caused by ammonia. As of this writing, no kitchen waste
from Toronto has been shipped to New York for incineration.
Instead, Toronto shipped roughly 1,000 truckloads of organic waste
to Quebec each year until November 2008, when the two plants in
Quebec - GSI Environment and Ferti-Val - were closed, mostly due to

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severe odor problems.
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Fixing the Problem
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7. (U) The city of Toronto is now processing 100% of its kitchen
waste in Ontario. Since November, when the Quebec plants closed,
Toronto has ramped up contracts with two new Ontario facilities --
Dutch-owned Orgaworld, near London, Ontario, which opened in 2007,
and Universal Resource, a C$17 million recycling and composting
facility in Welland, Ontario, which opened in 2008. Toronto now
ships about 70,000 metric tons of organics annually to these two
plants. York Region ships 30,000 to the Orgaworld facility. At
full capacity, the Orgaworld facility is expected to process 150,000
metric tons a year.


8. (U) In 2007, Toronto City Council approved two new composting
facilities within the city's limits. At full capacity, each of the
two facilities will be capable of processing 55,000 metric tons of
organic material -- two-thirds of the city's projected 2010
processing needs.

9. (U) Outside of Toronto, the city of Guelph also plans to
re-establish a compost plant by 2011 that will process 30,000 metric
tons of organic waste per year. Since the facility's capacity will
exceed what the city currently produces in kitchen waste, the new
facility expects to be able to accept organic waste from other
municipalities for a fee of C$50-100 per metric ton. Peel Region
has a compost-curing facility, located in Caledon, which also closed
in 2007 due to odor problems. After that closure, Peel Region
shipped 50 truckloads of partially composted kitchen waste to a
Barrie topsoil company in 2007. The company did not have approval
from the Ontario Ministry of Environment to accept unfinished
compost, however, and since has worked with Peel Region to clean up
of thousands of plastic bags that held the organics. Peel Region
plans to reopen its Caledon curing facility in April 2009 after
spending nearly C$11 million on upgrades to help curb the odor
problem.

10. (U) Ontario is currently reviewing its Waste Diversion Act.
Municipalities are hopeful that the Act will contain a policy to
establish multiple grades of compost for waste diversion, instead of
just one, as it has today. (Note: Having multiple compost grades
allows processed SSO to be used for a broader range of applications,
such as brownfield redevelopment, instead of being limited to
agricultural and gardening use, ultimately diverting more SSO from
landfill.) The public consultation phase closed on April 1, 2009.
We do not expect to see a comprehensive plan to help municipalities
recycle organic waste since the primary focus of the review is on
the diversion of industrial, commercial, and institutional waste,
which account for two-thirds of all Ontario's non-hazardous solid
waste, including organic waste.

11. (U) Comment: The good news is that by 2010, Ontario expects that
its total organic waste processing capacity will reach 450,000
metric tons, although that may be an optimistic estimate, given the
province's past failure to meet earlier goals, such as opening new
landfills so garbage would not have to be exported to Michigan.
Unfortunately, even if processing capacity reaches 450,000 metric
tons by the end of 2010, by that time Ontario is expected to produce
some 500,000 metric tons of kitchen-based organic waste annually.
While some of the extra 50,000 or more metric tons may end up in
Quebec, Covanta Energy in New York is also a likely destination.


12. (SBU) As the New York public becomes aware of the shipments,
there may be a rising chorus of local complaints about odor, the
stigma of being the recipient of another country's garbage, and
perhaps the carbon footprint associated with transporting and
incinerating the material (although transport and processing
elsewhere in Ontario probably would result in a similar net carbon
footprint). If New York benefits economically from receiving the
waste shipments - for example, via cheaper fuel for power generation
and additional local jobs - officials there may wish to be prepared
to quickly explain the benefits at such time as the shipments become
a political issue. End Comment.

NAY