YC...etc...

Well, I was wondering what you were referring to.

Unfortunately the article isn't very clear, at least with statistics. I did a practicum at a cement plant years ago - damned little waste there. Ash comes out one end, cement the other, and damned little gets wasted, except for natural gas in huge choking volumes, and a bunch of water, which moves through settling and cooling tanks first, then into the sewer system. So if you're including the carbon dioxides and nitrogen dioxides that are burnt in the furnace, I'd have to say...perhaps. I'd need to see some figures, though. A tonne of cement requires about three-quarters of a tonne of greenhouse gases. That's no 40:1 ratio.

And granted, some industries receive permits to dump their shit where they want, but substantially all businesses that manufacture must dump in landfills or recycle. One of the small business I worked for a couple of summers made light fixtures. All their waste was taken home by the owner for his residential trash once a week - one large garbage bag, plus another bag to the special waste facility once or twice a year filled with paints and coatings residue. The rest, generally metals and shipping cardboard was all recycled.

But more figures would be nice.

On another topic

Whatever you mean by "rich" also lacks a little foundation.

On a global scale, if you earn over $6,761/year, you're rich. You're above the median income for the world.

If what you really mean by "rich" are those who jet off to Hamptons every weekend and buy new Chanels and Rolls Royces all the time, there are scarcely enough of them to laugh at. Perhaps two million people all over the world live lifestyles approaching that kind of wasteful excess. It's a sin all right, but one outweighed in very short order by a single week's warfare in the world.

That's the real wasteful tragedy.

Zalm on Waste

The waste the article refers to is:

"The biggest slice of the GNT pie—76 percent—consists of industrial wastes from pulp and paper, iron and steel, stone, clay, glass, concrete, food processing, textiles, plastics, and chemical manufacturing; water treatment; and other industries—...industrial hazardous waste, a witches' brew of toxic ingredients found in paints, pesticides, printing ink, and chemicals used in manufacturing processes—hundreds of such substances, from acetonitrile to ziram.

A slice of about 18 percent is something called "special waste," ...includes waste from cement kilns, mining, fuel production, and processing of mineral components ... Along with 350 million tons of construction waste, ...it omits, for example, the billions of tons per year of US agricultural waste..."

If you include things like gaseous waste - the per capita CO2 released in Canada is 17.4 tonnes per yr.

Zalm on the Wealthy

It would be ludicrous to call anyone making over World Median income Rich. Where's the Middle class? I was referring to the high concentration of wealth amongst the top 1% or so.

The top 1% of households in the USA, owns nearly 40% of total household wealth, more than the bottom 90%. A number that is consistently increasing.

The top 0.2% of wealthy in the World, own US$40.7 trillion, double of the bottom 90%. And effectively they control a much larger share of wealth than that, through their domination of interlocking Boards of Directors of large corporations. And control over the private banks that create money. And political parties.

That is what I call obscene wealth & obscene waste, as well as an inherent subversion of democracy.

I don't consider the avg Canadian wealthy, simply because they have such trouble making ends meet. That level of wealth can easily be achieved on a Global scale, the impediment is political not scientific or technological.

Zero Waste

As we become more engaged in the waste debate, a few things need to be looked at. Why, if we are developing community based Zero Waste programs all over BC, are we not using Zero Waste consultants and sustainability experts? Yet, in most communities, we, the taxpayer, pay for "waste consultants" to design our community Zero Waste plans. That's like using a carpenter to wire your house and an electrician to build it. Both talented trades people, but totally unqualified in the others domain.

There needs to be a larger debate and support for an infrastructure that supports reuse and repair. Dumbed down waste management practices that spends zillions on collecting a few recyclables all mixed together in one tote is not sustainable. This creates no incentive to reduce.Everything is treated as waste. And it magically goes away.

What is really needed is a paradigm shift in thinking from the bottom up, not the top down. Why is so much of our taxes wasted on wasting? Investing in the future for the benefit of future generations requires some boldness now. Not which method of throwing things away is better?

The Triple Bottom line might as well be the Economic Bottom Line. The Environmental and Social parts are seldom even considered. But are routinely trotted out to create the illusion of responsibility by some in government. Bad waste management practices goes to the lowest bidder. And millions are spent on consulting and reviewing and discussion of how to be more sustainable. And expensive ad agencies are hired (at taxpayers expense) to sell the illusion. Renewable Energy, Waste to Energy are sanitized buzz words for Burning Garbage.

We have more power then we know. Our vote is a powerful tool but by not being informed, it can be wasted. Zero Waste starts at the ballet box. And the power we have as consumers can have a huge affect on how producers bring to market their goods. Government can't fix this. It really is up to us. If cigarettes are harmful, stopping smoking makes a lot of sense. If those bizarre packaging concoctions are hard to recycle, don't buy them. And if you have to, leave the packaging at the cash register! We will do this. But it involves us, the consumer, the producers and government, all of us pulling on the same rope in the same direction. Supporting Green Job creation through reusing and reclaiming, not burning and landfilling is the only answer. During the last World War, what would we have done if everything was burned?
www.sustainablecoast.ca

YCSTS

On waste: I hear you, and I hear the article. But my own experience doesn't bear that out, and I'm pretty sure that the cement industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world, right up there with pulp and paper. I don't see the waste, and the article doesn't mention how the waste is measured or created - it just says that it is. I'd like some facts and figures. Surely someone has done some studies on this?

BC kilns don't burn special waste, at least not that I'm aware of, so the only pollutants are the kiln discharge - lime and base that remain unreacted after their passage through the kiln. It's all returned to the kiln to re-bake, and what small proportion still remains as waste at the other end is shipped to the landfill. Hundreds of tonnes of it. But not hundreds of thousands of tonnes. At least not in BC. And Vancouver alone produces 450,000 tonnes of residential waste a year. There's some serious disconnect here that I'm trying to set straight in my own mind.

And on the wealthy? I couldn't agree with you more - the obscene wealth of those who control the world shouldn't be allowed. But they are such a small proportion of the population that their personal waste, even luxurious as it is, is still miniscule by comparison with all the ordinary schmoes who jet off to Haiti or Mexico or Florida every year. And those ordinary schmoes, some of whom earn only $24,000 a year, are still wealthier than 72% of the rest of the world. And they pollute in accord with their wealth. One should never forget that.

And I'm sure you don't mean to minimize the waste of war, especially as it is most often conducted on behalf of the aforementioned wealthy that you and I both just finished slagging.

But you did. And you shouldn't.

Gos bless the dumpster diver - not!

I have been told that a dumpster diver is the world's best recycler. Nice try, but I have had to throw the garbage back into the dumpster after they finish up their diving routine. Would you like to clean up their feaces that they leave behind because the dumpster box provides a little privacy?

I don't want to hear such nonsense about dumpster divers because they are just as irresponsible as anyone else, and often worse.

Tearing down a house is one thing but recycling the waste is not economically viable. If we want to establish a funded program to recycle used lumber then fine, let's talk about that, but trying to pull 2X4's out of a wall without breaking them and pull all the nails and then stack in a neat pile for picking up adds a great deal of cost to that particular recycling issue.

Most people do not spend a moment to assess the work that goes into recycling anything that cannot easily be separated from a conglomerate of other materials. And apart from the cost there is the time on-site to carefully recycle an old house.

Now ask yourself, if this was your new house going up are you willing to pay extra for the time delays and the labour costs to have the old house recycled?

On construction sites they throw away plenty of 2X4's and even plywood when there is no more need for the materials. Why? Because it would cost more to pay someone to stack them up, hire a truck and driver and store them somewhere to sell in one shot. And forget Craigs List - low ballers and freebie hunters.

My point to all this is that it is far easier to have an opinion and comment than it is to invent a real solution. So don't be so glib about pointing the finger.

too simplistic

Would you rather pay someone to reuse the lumber and drywall in your house, or would you rather drive the price of the land it's sitting on up even higher as you are now doing? The easiest way to do this is to instantly double the price of dumping used houses in the landfill. You'll see a dozen building recyclers spring up where now there is only one.

Close by me (300-block W. 11th) is a four-unit strata house that was built less than ten years ago with 100% recycled timber, and, so I was told, 100% remanufactured drywall too - though I can't figure out where the builder could have gotten that done. He sold them quite quickly into the real estate market at the time, and they seemed to go for about the same price as everyone else paid. There was even an article in the local rag about the project.

The end total paid is the same. We only have so much money for housing. But if your house costs more to build, then your land will have less artificial value. After all, all land is artificially valued, because, as economists point out, you can't pick it up and walk away with it. That's the whole principle behind BC Assessment's little January gift to each of us - read your own sometime, and then figure out for yourself how nonsensical your last post was.