Methane Methinks

The news that the City of Sudbury is heading towards a ‘Green Box’ collection system will soon reach our Lord Mayor and his minions at City Hall. Their first thoughts may be ‘How much money did Sudbury receive from Queens Park to implement this bold scheme?’ but hard on the heels of that envious thought will be ‘how can North Bay out-do our sister city to the west?’

According to the news report, Sudburians will be encouraged to put all sorts of disgusting things in their Green box, things that are now politely hidden in the garbage bags and bins. Anything that will decompose can be recycled through the composting system, including chicken bones, fish guts, dog and cat pooh, bacon grease, Tim Horton paper cups and baby diapers. By some magic, the rotting fish guts will not smell so the composting area need not be more than several miles from the city. The resulting compost can be used to fertilize the many trees now being planted as carbon credits, thus saving the planet from certain droughts, floods and plagues.

The other huge saving expected to accrue to Sudburians is the reduction in volume of waste going to their landfill sites. This is a very important factor, since finding safe environmentally friendly dumpsites is a problem, not only in Toronto, but even here in the North. This potential saving will no doubt have our budget chief weighing the cost/benefit ratios of creating a larger recycling centre versus finding another dumpsite in a neighbouring township. A new recycling centre has been on the back burners for sometime in North Bay and Sudbury’s venture into Green Boxing may be all the impetus council needs.

However, in a well-timed release, His Worship has touted the success of our methane-gathering project at our landfill site. Methane is one of the gases given off by the rotting, composting and digesting that happens as the thousands of tonnes of garbage buried in the landfill ever so slowly recycles itself back into the environment. By capturing this gas and burning it, we can turn this heat into electricity – enough electricity to provide an entire subdivision in the city! Therefore, while Sudbury is making fertilizer for the carbon trees, we are saving the planet by reducing the need for Ontario Power Generation to use more fossil fuels, uranium and falling water to sell us cheap electricity.

Before we jump on the green box bandwagon, we should consider how removing the methane-producing waste from our landfill would reduce our ability to make electricity from the dump. We should also consider the costs of adding yet another garbage collection system to our streets. We have taken positive, small steps by using our own composting bins, putting the newspapers and cardboard into separate bundles, recycling glass and tin and finally getting the booze bottles out of the system. Some of us may feel that adding another collection bin is simply too inconvenient and not worth the effort. Certainly, the crows, seagulls and racoons will be upset if we seal all the nice smelly stuff in green bins. The bears will find a way to open the bins and may indeed, welcome the new feeding stations.

I for one am with the Mayor on this issue – I want to continue to send my chickens bones and pizza ribs to his methane plant in Merrick.