Calgary was one of the last major cities in Canada to adopt curbside recycling, but the same year council finally said yes to blue bins, it set one of the country’s most ambitious waste reduction targets.
It will miss that target.
After years of stating Calgary could remain on track to divert 80 per cent of all waste from landfills by next decade — the “80/20 by 2020″ campaign it pledged to homeowners and schoolchildren alike — city waste officials have confirmed it’s likely unobtainable.
Calgary will try its darnedest to improve the diversion rate in coming years: mandatory recycling in condos and apartments next year, green-bin composting for houses in 2017, and an outright ban on accepting business’ paper and cardboard at city landfills by 2018.
Even with all those measures, it’s more likely 60/40 by 2020, a new report to councillors states. Even the strongest sector — single-family homes, soon to have three separate bins — will still send 30 per cent of their trash to accumulate in city dumps.
Other sectors, like multi-family, industrial and construction lag farther behind, and are projected to slash their landfill rates but not by enough.
“Although this is below the original target it does represent significant progress,” states the report, which council’s utilities committee will discuss Wednesday.
This update marks the first time city hall has formally admitted the 2020 strategy won’t work. But it’s no surprise to Coun. Brian Pincott, the committee’s vice-chair.
When the waste and recycling division recommended a $21-a-month charge for a recycling program that would handle organic waste as well as paper, glass, metal and plastic, Pincott was an environmental campaigner for the Sierra Club.
He watched as that day’s council chose the cheaper, simpler, blue-cart option. Later that year, after he was elected, council adopted the 2020 target.
It was probably doomed from the start, Pincott said Sunday.
“Council rejected that all-encompassing approach way back when as too big a bite, so city administration started going in smaller bite-sized approaches,” he said.
The city diverted 30 per cent of all sectors’ waste, compared to 20 per cent in 2007. Houses and townhouses diverted at a 34-per-cent rate, and should do much better when everyone gets organics collection.
The Vancouver region, which has the same 80/20 target timeline, has hit a 60-per-cent rate, having long had composting and an ever-expanding list of materials banned from the trash stream.
Edmonton, has surpassed 50 per cent, with its massive industrial plant that separates organics so homeowners don’t have to — and hopes to get its residential diversion rate to 90 per cent before decade’s end because of its new waste-to-energy plant.
That new thermal technology is also expected to bring Metro Vancouver to its target. Calgary had expected to get from 70 to 80 with biofuel converters and similar measures, but is now worried the technology will be too costly or unproven to be worth aggressively pursuing anytime soon, according to the report.
Dick Ebersohn, the report’s author, said the city’s slow pace in pursuing its strategy obviously contributed to the missed target.
“Right now we only have one diversion program going: curbside recycling in the single-family sector,” he said. “That’s all.”
By 2020, all sectors will have traditional and organics recycling, but users may not embrace it quickly enough to properly divert everything they can, said Ebersohn, leader of strategic planning for Calgary waste and recycling. The revised forecast assumes conservative “low capture” rates for diversion, he noted.
The public has demanded progress like they hadn’t in 2007, and the city is doing its best to catch up to its Canadian peers, Pincott said.
“We’ve gone from zero to 100 in record time,” he said.
“It would be a big deal if today we said what we have now is good enough. And nobody is saying that.”
It had appeared clear to Pincott for a few years that Calgary wouldn’t meet its council-approved goal. The city reported it now because it could collect data from all sectors, and the information will help focus councillors on the need to plan measures beyond 2020, Ebersohn said.
The city’s admission also comes weeks after the retirement of Dave Griffiths, the longtime director of waste and recycling services. Griffiths was in charge when 80/20 by 2020 first got council’s green light.
The dream, while likely dashed, still matters, Ebersohn said.
“A goal is crucial as a driver.”
jmarkusoff@calgaryherald.com