York Region’s garbage-to-fuel-pellet program trashed

Yorkregion.com
Nov. 6, 2014
By Laura Finney

York Region no longer sends its garbage to Dongara Developments to be processed into fuel pellets.

The company approached the region in August, requesting the 20-year contract, which began in 2008, be terminated, said Laura McDowell, director of environmental promotion and protection.

“Dongara notified us that they were no longer able to process our waste, that they were going to be imminently shutting down the facility,” she said. “They really wanted us to agree to terminate that contract.”

Vaughan’s Dongara plant was originally contracted to accept up to 100,000 tonnes of waste per year.

At the plant, trash was sorted, shredded and compressed into pellets that could be used as a coal replacement and burned as fuel.

The region decided to work with Dongara because this technology offered the ability to maximize diversion from landfill, said McDowell.

“That is what our council was really committed to doing,” she said. “It’s certainly not the cheapest alternative, I think our council recognized in order to do the right thing, sometimes it costs you more.”

Unfortunately Dongara was unable to sell the product in Ontario. The pellets were not considered a fuel and were classified as waste.

“That really impacted their ability to market that pellet effectively,” said McDowell.

But this was not the first time the company had troubles.

In 2009, the Toronto Star uncovered that Dongara was not turning all the waste into pellets and trucking some to a landfill.

The region had detailed discussions and rectified that situation, explained McDowell.

“We wanted the best value for our taxpayers, so we needed to be apprised when they were experiencing some interruptions at the plant. We agreed that they needed to notify if the plant needed to be shut down,” she said. “We didn’t want to be paying a premium if they were ultimately going to have to send to landfill.”

Because they had maintained a close relationship with Dongara, the region knew things were not going well last summer and regional staff was able to activate a contingency plan, she said.

Now garbage is going to landfills and other energy-from-waste (EFW) facilities where trash is burned for electricity, such as Covanta Energy in New York State.

Covanta is also the operator of the Durham-York Energy Centre, which will soon take waste from York.

“We have a very diverse residual waste program,” explained McDowell. “Because things can happen in the waste industry, we want to make sure that we can always provide that uninterrupted service for our residents.”

Ending the contract with Dongara early will not have an impact on taxpayers, said McDowell.

“It’s pretty much the same,” she said, adding it costs residents about $227 a year for the collection and processing of waste management from the curb.

In York Region, about 360,000 tonnes of waste is created and about 130,000 is residual waste, which is not compostable or recyclable.

York Region has a Sm4rt Living Plan focusing on waste reduction, reuse and behaviour change.

Part of the plan includes the four Rs - reduce, reuse, recycle and recover.

“We want to respect our council’s commitment to that fourth R, so we do everything we can to maximize that diversion from landfill and we send to energy-from-waste facilities,” she said.

Not all items are suitable for EFW facilities and that’s why there are landfill contracts.

But McDowell is also hoping the plan will help the public drive some tonnes away from the curb, including using better strategies to reduce organic waste in green bins because that is one of the more expensive diversion streams.

There is also an opportunity to reduce residual waste through reuse programs and charities, she said.