There’s no place to hide the growing heaps of nasty plastic garbage, but a dump off the Walton Woods Road is apparently as good a place as any to bury it.
Nova Scotia’s Environment Minister Iain Rankin appeared just long enough last week to give Halifax leave to dump its excess plastic rubbish at GFL’s landfill, located at the rural site in eastern West Hants.
The ministerial appearance was necessary to get the garbage out of the news and let the minister practice his grim determination. He managed grim, but his demeanor may have reflected the inanity of his singular talking point that this was somehow in the best interest of Nova Scotians.
The minister is caught between a local rock and global hard place, because China isn’t willing to take our crap anymore, leaving the province’s municipal landfills with heaps of plastic grocery bags and the like.
Only HRM has been granted an exemption from provincial regulations that forbid disposal of recyclable plastics in a landfill, and then only for six months. Thursday, the minister will meet with folks described improbably as solid waste chairs to try to come up with a more permanent plan to get rid of Nova Scotia’s share of the world’s most pervasive and permanent trash.
Rankin and the municipal garbage czars will have to think globally as they attempt to act locally, because China’s decision left vast reeking heaps of plastic bags in unwelcome backyards all over the larger place called Earth. And, as big as the stinking piles of so-called film plastic are in Nova Scotia, they’re barely the tip the world’s massive plastic trash iceberg.
Nova Scotia’s minister said the six-month exemption granted to HRM won’t be extended. That’s a promise he may come to regret, unless the regional municipality and Nova Scotia’s other landfill operators can find a willing recipient of the rubbish, or the province summons the gumption enact a longer-term fix.
The stuff can be recycled, which is what China was doing with much of it, but that’s not financially feasible anywhere a living wage is paid. It’s cheaper to make new plastic from petroleum.
Nova Scotia has a resident refuse expert living in Canning. Doug Hickman is a waste management consultant who’s helped more than 50 nations set up recycling and disposal systems, so maybe the minister should listen to Doug when he says there’s a solution, but no quick fix.
It’s a plastic world. There’s 320 million tonnes of it consumed but not devoured every year. An estimated 13 million tonnes of that finds its way into the oceans, causing scientists to fear that, by volume, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s waters within the lifetime of most readers of these words.
There’s plenty of research and development going on to produce bioplastic and other substitutes that are less harmful environmentally, but the economics are and will remain heavily in favour of nearly indestructible petroleum-based plastics.
In Nova Scotia, municipalities are hoping the province will step up so there is a coordinated response, and they’re not each left to their own limited resources.
The municipalities flagged the issue with the province six months ago, but until the mounds of plastic bags were visible from TV sets, computer screens and newspaper pages, the province was unmoved.
The provincial government can’t leave municipalities holding the bags. The politics of plastic trash may be fraught, but barring the emergence of a yet undetected destination, a singular provincial response is required.
Burying the problem with the trash is not a solution, but there are at least a couple to choose from.
One is to ban the stuff outright, but that’s hard for one little jurisdiction to pull off. Film plastic includes lots of grocery and other shopping bags, but there are other sources like plastic product wraps, too.
Extended producer responsibility (EPR), like the fee charged on electronics in Nova Scotia, is another option. At the point of purchase, consumers pay a fee that goes back to the source industry along with the used product, which must then be recycled.
Whatever the answer, it’s not good enough for the province to say it’s up to municipalities. There is a time for provincial leadership and this is it.
Jim Vibert, a journalist and writer for longer than he cares to admit, consulted or worked for five Nova Scotia governments. He now keeps a close and critical eye on provincial and regional powers.
