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Green Bin Waste Being Dumped in Regular Garbage

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Green bin program a mess

City denies it, but workers say they routinely dump organics into regular garbage

Aug 04, 2009 04:30 AM

Moira Welsh
Staff Reporter

Toronto Star

Toronto garbage workers have been routinely mixing green bin organics with regular trash that is trucked to a Michigan landfill, say city employees interviewed by the Star.

The workers – who return to work today after a five-week strike – say this occurs at those transfer stations where all types of garbage are first brought after collection from homes.

A former manager in a transfer station confirmed he had seen this happen and that some managers allow the practice to get rid of the enormous amount of green bin waste produced by Torontonians.

Instead of being turned into compost, tonnes of meat, vegetables and dirty diapers are dumped into garbage trucks and taken to Michigan's Carleton Farms Landfill, according to current employees and a former manager of city solid waste transfer stations.

Geoff Rathbone, the general manager of Toronto's solid waste department, says the workers' stories are simply "not true."

The allegations follow a Star investigation into Toronto's flawed green bin program, which found that thousands of tonnes of green bin waste that properly passed through the transfer stations were sent to compost processors but ended up in landfills and gravel pits.

The story raised serious questions about Toronto's diversion rates and Mayor David Miller's campaign promise to divert 70 per cent of garbage from landfill by 2010. Miller and city officials vehemently denied the story's conclusions.

After the Star published the story, a long-time city worker called to say there was another violation of the program taking place inside the transfer stations – mixing bags of organics with regular garbage.

"It is wrong," says the man, who, like the other workers, asked that his name not be used for fear of losing his job. "The public is separating their food and doing all this work and here we are, tossing it all in the garbage anyway."

Jeffrey Griffiths, Toronto's auditor general, says he plans to investigate Toronto's overall waste system next year. One of the workers says the audit should start sooner. "I'll tell him everything."

In independent and separate interviews conducted while they were on strike, the workers say bags of organics are routinely mixed into the garbage trucks for two reasons:

Employees say they are under pressure to fill the Michigan-bound garbage trucks to their maximum weight of 35.7 tonnes and get them out of the station as fast as possible. Green bin organics are much heavier than regular dry garbage so tossing in a few tonnes is an "easy" way to get the job done fast, they claim.

There is so much green bin waste collected – and so few processors capable of handling it – that it often rots until it liquefies, leaking across the transfer station floor. "We just have to get rid of it," they say.

The city's Rathbone said this never happens. Asked how he knew, Rathbone told the Star he talked to his solid waste managers who told him the "accusations are lies."

The Star separately interviewed four long-time workers from Toronto transfer stations, and one former city employee, a shift supervisor. Currently, only five of Toronto's seven transfer stations handle green bin waste.

All of the men interviewed said they witnessed organics being tossed into the landfill-bound trucks. Three have done it themselves. None believe someone as senior as Rathbone would be aware of the practice.

When asked if they were talking as a means of retaliating against the city for the strike, the workers said they had agreed to be interviewed because the stories "are true."

Their allegations were supported by John Harwood, who was fired by Toronto in February 2008. He worked for the city for 34 years, with 22 of those spent as a manager in landfills and six of the city's seven transfer stations.

Harwood recently received a financial settlement from Toronto, after fighting his termination in court. In his statement of claim, Harwood said he was fired because he waged an aggressive campaign for tougher health and safety rules in the handling of radioactive waste that lands in transfer stations. The city said Harwood was fired because he failed to control unruly garbage workers.

In 2006, two years after Harwood was named Toronto's first radiation supervisor, he was reassigned and sent to work as a shift supervisor at Victoria Park transfer station.

In an interview at his Barrie home, Harwood said he has seen workers put green bin organics into garbage trucks. He said he stopped it on his shift but knew it was being done on other shifts, and in different transfer stations.

"Definitely, it gets done," he said. "It shouldn't, because we want a nice clean world, our environment looked after. Residents think that everything should be recycled and source-separated and dealt with properly, but it isn't."

To understand why workers defy the multi-million dollar program, which the city says diverted 94,000 tonnes of kitchen waste last year, requires insight into garbage itself.

Green bin organics are plastic bags filled with meat, fruit, vegetables, disposable diapers and animal feces.

The bags are wet and heavy. Regular garbage is lighter. No longer including food waste or blue bin cardboard and plastic, household garbage is made up of such lightweight items as paper scraps, clothing, or bulky pieces like mattresses.

There is pressure on workers and supervisors to fill the Michigan-bound tractor-trailers to their maximum weight, say Harwood and the workers. The problem is, it takes more time and effort to compact the garbage into the back of a trailer and reach the necessary weight.

The trucks have to be weighed before they drive out the door and if they are not close to their maximum – 35.7 tonnes – then workers have to dig out the garbage, find heavier items to push inside the trailer and compact it again.

Often, it works, but when it doesn't the weight problem is quickly solved by adding a few tonnes of green bin organics, Harwood and the workers claim.

Supervisors sometimes quietly come to the workers and say, "throw in some of the special stuff," to get the job done, the men said. Sometimes, workers do it of their own volition, to make the job easier.

According to the employees, the front-end loaders have computerized scales in their "buckets." One load of garbage weighs roughly two tonnes, while one scoop of organics is closer to six tonnes, they say.

Rathbone confirmed that the city wants tractor-trailers filled as close as possible to their maximum weight load of 35.7 tonnes for "efficiency" purposes. The average weight for each load is 35.3 tonnes, he said in an email.

Rathbone said Toronto pays its waste hauler, Verspeeten Cartage, a flat rate for each shipment. (Verspeeten did not respond to several interview requests.)

Once the trailers are full, they are weighed and sent down Highway 401 to Republic Services' Carleton Farms Landfill in Michigan.

Bill McDonough, division manager of the landfill, said in an interview that there is no way he would know whether Toronto was adding the organics to the regular garbage.

"You can't tell what comes from what when municipal solid waste comes in," McDonough said. "We've got so much material coming in, it all looks the same."

Many Michigan municipalities do not separate their garbage and so what goes into Carleton Farms from the state is similar to Toronto's garbage before 2002, when the green bin program came into effect. The Star visited the site recently and watched tractor-trailers dump their loads onto a massive plateau of garbage. It was impossible to tell what was in the thousands of plastic bags.

Rathbone said the green bin program has had its troubles, but dumping organics in garbage trucks is not among them.

In an email, he disputed the workers' claims and noted that the Star declined his request for workers' identities and work locations.

"Our system has numerous checks and balances which allow me to say (the allegations are false) with confidence," he wrote.

Moira Welsh can be reached at mwelsh@thestar.ca or 416-869-4073.
 
I dunno... this seems strangely timed. I'm unwilling to make conclusions until this undergoes a real investigation, not a few quotes to The Star from what sounds like disgruntled employees.
 
Actually, the first stories about this were in the news quite a few weeks back.

I know someone who worked at a transfer station, and he told me it was routine practice to direct organics to garbage. He also mentioned it was a disgusting job, which is why he quit.
 
Actually, the first stories about this were in the news quite a few weeks back.

I know someone who worked at a transfer station, and he told me it was routine practice to direct organics to garbage. He also mentioned it was a disgusting job, which is why he quit.

i've heard that large amount of recyclable materials such as glass bottles, etc. have been thrown out because there was too much. this news doesn't surprise me.
 
? I heard mention about this last year.

P.S. Here's an article on it from last month.

Green bins: A wasted effort?

I've heard about it too, but I am skeptical of the more recent article's evidence vis a vis workers being ordered by management to bulk up non-compostable waste with supposedly "diverted" compost. Just seems like sour grapes.
 
BTW, for recyclables, when I brought several bags full to the transfer station back in 2008, they told me to dump it with the regular garbage. It was all mixed together.
 
I find it kinda weird that we've shown to make full use of our green bins, but they don't actually make it into composting (or whatever other environmentally friendly thing they do to it.)

Now is this just for the strike because the current system can't handle the backlog of green bin waste, or is green bin waste regularly put into the landfills? If current demand exceeds what can be processed, shouldn't they be upgrading their facilities so that demand can be met?
 
Kind of sounds like a labour problem to me - if some workers are mixing green bin waste in with trash because it's easier, then they should be fired. But, hey, that's kind of impossible, isn't it? Thanks, union contracts.

Also: The City issued a very flat denial of this, and the Star has limited sources (four workers and one guy who was fired and sued the city?) so this is not, by any reasonable standard, an entirely factual claim.
 
i've heard that large amount of recyclable materials such as glass bottles, etc. have been thrown out because there was too much. this news doesn't surprise me.

Glass has always been a problem. The raw materials are cheap. Separating coloured glass is expensive (mud colour glass has no value). So on one hand it makes more sense to discard it (being inert). On the other hand it is heavy, so transporting it adds cost.
 
Glass has always been a problem. The raw materials are cheap. Separating coloured glass is expensive (mud colour glass has no value). So on one hand it makes more sense to discard it (being inert). On the other hand it is heavy, so transporting it adds cost.


though it sounds insane, an option to discard crushed glass is on a shore line with alot of wave action. the repeated wave action against rocks, etc. rounds the sharp edges of the glass and makes nice smooth glass rocks.


800px-Glass_Beach_Fort_Bragg_3.jpg



similar phenomena is happening at the leslie spit.
 
Isn't petroleum formed through the accumulation, burial, and transformation of organic material—such as the remains of plants and animals—by chemical reactions over long periods of time? In other words, couldn't we make oil from our organic garbage? But do we have a million or so years?
 
You can make it using plasma waste conversion. It is usually done to make syn-gas, but you can also get an oily substance that can be refined into diesel.
 

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