Looking Ahead to 2017!

2016 was a great year for our team at the City. The dedication and enthusiasm of MCRs played an important role in this success. We're excited for things to come in 2017!

• Public consultation for the Waste Strategic Plan will take place in the spring.
• This will include possible automated collection and/or separate collection of compostables.
• Construction continues on the Anaerobic Digestion Facility (completion by end of year).
• The Waste-to-Biofuels Facility continues commissioning.
• Edmonton has teamed up with the National Zero Waste Council. We will research and begin developing programming about reducing residential food waste.

For the MCR Program in 2017

• Introducing a Waste Video of the Week, every Wednesday
• New volunteer roles at Compost ‘S cool
• Sharing the online version of MCR Training with all existing MCRs
• Hosting “Refresher Training sessions” every three months.
• Receiving new toys at Compost ‘S cool

Edmonton’s waste services has many impressive employees. From engineers at the EWMC, operators at the plants, collectors on trucks, attendants at Eco Stations, presenters in schools, to canvassers at doorsteps. The men and women who keep the system running are smart, passionate, and innovative folks.

But Sarah and Rodney are lucky because we get to see the amazing things that volunteers do for Edmonton’s waste system. MCRs are universally smart, passionate, and innovative.

From Rodney

I am still learning to be a dad, but I deeply appreciate that “it takes a village to raise a child.” One of the many gifts that my son and daughter have already received in life is the gift of community and volunteerism here in Edmonton.

I am ever grateful to MCRs (people like you) for what you do to reduce waste and help Edmonton’s waste system. You give your skills, your time, your passion, and your creativity by speaking up and by telling friends and family that waste matters.

At a personal level, I am sincerely grateful to MCRs (and you) for making Edmonton a better place for my children, and for future generations. Thank you.
“A some point, everything will be discarded, and yet none of it is garbage.”

From Sarah

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again -- I really do consider myself lucky to work with such an amazing, passionate group of volunteers. Master Composter Recyclers are giving, thoughtful Edmontonians who truly want a better, greener future for our city and our planet.

Part of my job is to teach MCRs about Edmonton’s waste system, but I have learned so much from my fellow MCRs. This community has been invaluable in helping me to shift my behaviours, thoughts, and actions to sustainable alternatives. We challenge and inspire each other to be better every day.

Thank you for a great year, and here’s to less waste in 2017!

The Styrofoam Conundrum, by MCR Christine W.

Why it is more environmentally friendly for Edmonton to NOT recycle Styrofoam?

Some landfills report up to a third of their space consume by Styrofoam (polystyrene). Ultimately we should try to reduce our use of Styrofoam. This includes not eating out at places that have a lot of packaging, and buying less “stuff” that comes packed to death. The only good use of Styrofoam that I have found is Japanese dome homes (worth Googling). These are cute little homes that look like something either a smurf or an alien would live in but, sadly, are ridiculously expensive and would not be rated for Edmonton climate.

The main challenge with recycling Styrofoam is bulk; it takes a lot of resources to ship. These two items weigh the same amount, but the spoon is so much smaller. Twenty of these spoons could be held in your hand, but twenty Styrofoam cubes would fill a garbage bag.

A few places in Alberta collect Styrofoam, including Grand Prairie and Cochrane. Both cities ship their polystyrene products to Asia for further processing.

Photo from Aquatera Utilities Inc.
This pile of 22 transit bags makes
approx. 16.5 ingots.

 The friendly folks in Grande Prairie shared some details about their process. They collect a range of clean Styrofoam products, including items like coffee cups and packing peanuts. They use a  $35,000 machine to break it down to a tenth of the original size into a product called “ingots”. 

The ingots are shipped to Japan to be made into hard dark plastic objects such as picture frames, encasements for computers, park benches, flower pots, architectural molding, toys, etc.

It is great that other places are recycling Styrofoam, so why doesn't Edmonton?

It's because the new Waste-to-Biofuels facility at the EWMC will convert the bulky Styrofoam directly into fuel. This facility will start operations this spring and is expected to be fully operational in 2016. Initially, it will produce methane from the Styrofoam and other waste that is not easily recycled or composted. Later on, it will produce ethanol which will be mixed with gasoline to reduce harmful emissions.

Photo from Aquatera Utilities Inc.
An ingot is 1 meter long and about 14 lbs.

Benefits:

• Edmonton’s Styrofoam will not end up in a landfill here or anywhere else.
• The Styrofoam is turned INTO fuel instead of requiring MORE fuel to process.
• The final product (ethanol) will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Fortunately we are already on this path and are in a unique position to both keep our Styrofoam out of landfills AND create fuel from it!

Laura H. models a huge piece of Styrofoam.

Christine W. graduated from the MCR program in 2010. She has volunteered in many ways as an MCR including presentations to school groups, events and tradeshows, blog posts, presentations for new MCRs, compost workshops and the #YEG Repairathon.

Record MCR Volunteering

6 Pack Holders: Recyclable or Not?

Let's use the 4Rs to talk about 6 Pack Holders. 

6 pack holder: recyclable or not?

 Reduce
Avoid 6 pack holders entirely by buying in bulk!

Reuse
Donate them to The Reuse Centre or make a craft yourself. Check out the full list of items accepted at the Reuse Centre.

Sarah, a staff member at the Reuse Centre shows off  a recent donation. 

Recycle? 
No, they do not belong in your Blue Bag or Blue Bin in Edmonton. Put them in the garbage, they will travel to the Edmonton Waste Management Centre and then to the landfill in Ryley, AB.

Recover
Starting in 2015 - when you put them in your garbage they will be turned into Biofuels along with other carbon based waste.

Useful Links: 
Living Green in a Colourful World Blog: snowfake craft instructions
edmonton.ca/reusecentre
edmontonbiofuels.ca

Biofuels in Edmonton: How does it all work?

The Edmonton Waste-to-Biofuels project enables us to use garbage as a resource. When combined with current recycling and composting initiates we will be able to achieve 90% diversion of waste from landfill. Read on for an overview of what's involved in the process.

Pre-processing (Sorting the garbage)

Garbage is sorted by people and machines into three streams: organic materials for composting; metals for recycling; and non-recyclable, non-compostable waste for conversion into refuse derived fuel. This is done at the Integrated Processing and Transfer Facility(IPTF). Integrated means to combine multiple things into a single unit, and that's exactly what the IPTF achieves. It's a waste transfer operation, a pre-processing operation, and a refuse derived fuel plant all wrapped into one. All residential garbage is taken here and processed.

Refuse Derived Fuel(RDF) Plant (Preparing the feedstock)

Refuse Derived Fuel prepared at the Edmonton Waste Management Centre

The City is responsible for converting waste to RDF, a material less than 2” in diameter which is free of inerts and metals. This will be achieved by a mechanical system that sorts and shreds waste. Keep your eyes peeled for a future blog which will dive into the details of RDF.

Conversion to Biofuels

The Waste-to-Biofuels Facility will convert 100,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste into biofuels annually. It will be built, owned and operated by Enerkem. The process involves heat, pressure, advanced chemistry and the use of cutting-edge catalysts. The RDF is heated up in an environment with little oxygen, this means the material will turn into a gas rather than combust. It has a positive energy balance, since gasification requires less energy than it produces. A significant portion of the water in the system is reused in a closed-loop. The process can be broken down into four steps. Check out edmontonbiofuels.ca for process details.

Enerkem’s 4-step process 

Advanced Energy Research Facility

The AERF is a pilot plant used to test feedstock for conversion into fuel or other green chemicals. The facility welcomes top researchers from Alberta, Canada, and around the world, particularly those specialized in thermo-catalysis. The facility focuses on researching innovative technologies for converting waste to biofuels.

Pilot gasification system at the Advanced Energy and Research Facility

Timeline

The Waste-to-Biofuels Facility is scheduled to be in operation in 2013 and at full capacity in 2015. The newest addition to the construction project is a 70,000 lb gasifier which is an important part in the process to transform waste into biofuels.

Gasifier for the Waste-to-Biofuels Facility at the Edmonton Waste Management Centre

We look forward to passing on details as we learn more about this exciting project!

For more information:
edmontonbiofuels.ca
edmonton.ca/ewmc
enerkem.com
Alberta Innovates- Energy and Environment Solutions

The Ghosts of Xmas Past

A few years back I unwrapped a nice set of Martha Stewart plates and was impressed by both the style and also the large amount of styrofoam used in the packaging.

On the next business day, I sent an email to Martha saying I liked the plates but thought she could do better with the box, and suggested a switch to low-grade paper instead of foamed plastic.

She didn't respond, but then, she's a busy lady.

It only took one mention to the manager of my local corner store and the foamed plastic egg cartons were replace with paper the following week. It took a few mentions to my local grocery store, and now, Wow! -no foamed pastic egg trays. I feel I can take some of the credit for less styro waste going to landfill today.

Lately, I have heard from a few Master Recyclers about plastic recycling technology as mentioned in last week's Journal and in this youTube video. (thanks to Heather, Alex, and Cathie for passing them on)

So, here is my take on this new technology:

Plastics come in many forms. Also, plastics pre 1980s are a real hodge-podge of chemicals and processes. If someone were to recycle plastics in their home or office, many of the toxins trapped in the plastics would be released to the environment. Also, wherever that oil was then burned as a fuel source toxins would enter the environment. The controls on this system appear few.

Also, recycling on such a small scale does not recover nearly the energy represented by those plastics. An industrial scale recycler would be far more efficient, even taking transportation into account.

The City of Edmonton is moving in this direction, but will recycle ALL residuals into ethanol. However, we will recycle and reuse FIRST. (see this post for more)

I am excited by this new technology, because it represents the move to home-based recycling. By that I mean, in the 50s a computer filled 4 rooms, the 70s saw the move to home based computers, and today we carry 1000 times the power in our pocket - imagine the cool recycing toys of the future.

Until the technology is developed further, it is best to leave this type of thing to the engineers and always ensure responsible recycling that will not release toxic nanoparticles to the environment.

Now, I'm off to roast marshmallows over some burning, pressure-treated off-cuts.

Incineration and Gassification

With all the talk in the media about Waste To Energy, I think it is important we know the differences between Edmonton's system and what is being proposed elsewhere.


This is the best video I could find to highlight concerns around W2E - unfortunately the last minutes are lost. There is a lot more information out there if you want to explore.





So, I hope that while you were watching that video you picked up on the main difference between London and Edmonton - we have addressed Recycling (Blue Box, then Blue Bags and Depots, then MF Blue Bins), Reduce (MC/R Program and home Composting), and now Reuse (Garbage Fairs, Reuse Centre, etc.) FIRST!

Edmontonians have grown into a system where W2E is a logical end to material that gets past our 3R based waste system. Hopefully, in time we will stop producing materials that are not completely recyclable (but that is another issue).

Aside from that, I still have a few things to learn about our new facility. I believe that high temperatures without the addition of oxygen for combustion results in a cleaner process. Folks down wind can rest assured that we have a top-of-the-line facility planned, and it is NOT an incinerator.

Biofuels Facility in Journal

Read about today's ground breaking ceremony on the Journal's website.

click here!

(Also, check out the "Bright Idea in a Tidy Package" as well, for an innovative local solar lamp!)

Visit their website.

More about Biofuels

If last Thursday's post about thermo-chemical conversion got you curious about how Enerkem processes waste to fuel, you can visit their website and find out more. click the title and see the process explained!

Step 1 - the pre-treatment of feedstock (aka garbage) involves turning the garbage into what we call 'fluff', pictured here.

What is the most confusing part of this process when you are discussing it with people?

Speaking of Biofuels...

In yesterday's Globe and Mail, Megawheels writer Michael Vaughan wrote about "Greening Our Vehicles" through the use of Ethanol.

For those of you (well, ...me and a few others) who have a hard time discussing this process with folks we meet, this will help. Here is a teaser from the article:

"...who would object if we produced the vast quantities of ethanol we need from good, old garbage?
That’s the promise of cellulosic ethanol. Cellulose is the non-food carbohydrate that forms the cell wall in most plants – trees, grass, corn, whatever. What an endless source of the stuff we have in our garbage stream.
Once you take out the recyclables – mostly metals – you’ve got cellulose aplenty. Tear down a house – more cellulose. Gather up wood chips and bark at a mill, collect agricultural waste, plant switch grass or miscanthus (grasses) on land that won’t grow anything else – and cellulose will never be in short supply.
My explanations are a trifle on the simplified side – consider the source – but there are basically two ways to turn cellulose into ethanol. There’s the biological approach and the thermo-chemical approach."

To read the entire article, click the title above.
and watch for the groundbreaking ceremony on the new facility this Autumn.

More info on the Biofuels Facility

The plans and building for the Biofuels Facility are moving along! Construction is beginning this summer. I thought it would be good to pass on some resources about this highly technical, confusing, difficult to explain topic. I'm still learning about it so hopefully these resources will help me and other Master Composter Recyclers explain what is happening to Edmonton's waste in the coming year.

Biofuels and Gasification

Let's start with the basics. Biofuels include ethanol, biodiesel, butanol and others. Biofuel production uses both old and new technologies. Conventional “first generation” ethanol is made by fermenting sugars from plants with high starch or sugar content into alcohol, using the same basic methods that brewers have relied on for centuries. The purest form of biodiesel is straight vegetable oil, but a more refined form produces methyl esters (basically, diesel). At the moment, most of these fuels are made from three kinds of agricultural feedstocks, which are also used for food:

• sugar crops, including sugar cane, sugar beets, and sweet sorghum;
• starch crops, including corn, wheat, barley, rye, cassava, sorghum grain, and other
cereals; and
• oilseed crops, including rapeseed/canola, soybeans, sunflower, mustard, and others.

“Second generation” biofuel technologies employ more sophisticated processes to convert biomass into fuel. These include enzymatic and other processes to turn urban waste (municipal solid waste, or MSW), animal waste and fat into biodiesel, and convert cellulose from grasses and waste wood into ethanol and other fuels. So the Edmonton Biofuels Facility is a second-generation biofuel technology.

After reading a May 6, 2010 press release about the facility, I found a nice diagram of the gasification process as it would look for our facility. (Click the image to see a larger version.)

Step 1- Feedstock pre-treatment
The sorted municipal solid waste which is left over from the Materials Recovery Facility or the Composting Facility or other landfill material is shredded. It is stored in a container that is connected to the gasifier via a front-end feeding system.

Step 2- Gasification
The gasification process converts carbon-rich waste into a uniform synthetic gas (syngas). The heat and the pressure break apart the chemical bonds of the waste material into a syngas. The conversion of waste materials into syngas takes less than 10 seconds. Due to the lack of oxygen in the process, there

Step 3- Cleaning and conditioning of the synthetic gas
The syngas is cleaned and conditioned in order to prepare it for catalytic conversion to methanol and ethanol. The cleaning process is accomplished through a sequential conditioning system, which includes cyclonic removal of inert matter, secondary carbon/tar conversion, heat recovery units, and reinjection of tar/fines into the reactor. The syngas that is produced by this process is ready for conversion into liquid fuel.

Step 4- Conversion into liquid fuel
Using a sequential catalytic conversion process and commercially available catalysts, the syngas is converted to market ready fuels and chemicals. The catalysts rearrange the molecules in the gas into methanol and ethanol.


The Emissions from Gasification
Because there's a lot of concern about "heating up" garbage which will release extremely harsh chemicals like dioxin, I've been wondering about the emissions from a gasification facility. Thanks to Wikipedia, here's some insight into the greenhouse gas emissions:

In second generation thermal technologies, nearly all of the carbon content in the waste is emitted as carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (when including final combustion of the products from pyrolysis and gasification). Municipal solid waste contain approximately the same mass fraction of carbon as CO2 itself (27%), so treatment of 1 metric ton of MSW produce approximately 1 metric ton of CO2. In the event that the waste was landfilled, 1 metric ton (1.1 short tons) of MSW would produce approximately 62 cubic metres (2,200 cu ft) methane via
the anaerobic decomposition of the biodegradable part of the waste. This amount of methane has more than twice the global warming potential than the 1 metric ton of CO2, which would have been produced by combustion.

Further readings:

Waste to Energy Research and Technology Council (WTERT) Canada

Edmonton Biofuels
"Trash-Based Biofuels Could Alleviate Land Use, Emissions Issues" posted May 4, 2010



In a January 2009 publication released by the Sierra Club and Worldwatch Institute, entitled Smart Choices for Biofuels, gasification and other second generation (or thermal) technologies were highlighted as having a potential advantage over first generation technologies (p.7):

Nearly all studies on the role of biofuels in mitigating global warming and boosting energy security have concluded that “second-generation” biofuels, which rely on non-food feedstocks and offer dramatically improved energy and greenhouse gas profiles, are necessary to make wider use of biofuels feasible worldwide.