My work has got me very involved in understanding the Zero Waste movement lately -- and the zero carbon footprint dimension -- and I've begun to feel that -- with certain qualifications -- it offers the philosophical underpinning to solve many of society's (and the world's) problems. We are the ones who will have to change our ways, and our value system. I'm beginning to understand that certain forms of pollution, poverty, war and demagoguery are not accidental, but the inevitable consequence of our consumer culture and the imperial projection of our power around the world extracting and exploiting human and natural resources on terms that are favorable to us, backed up by military force.

To break the cycle, we first have to understand the system upon which we stand, which is largely out of sight and therefore out of mind, and we then need solutions -- because it quickly becomes depressing and people will simply "tune out" if the bad news isn't delivered almost hand-in-hand with information about what we can do to make positive change.

To that end, if you click on the two links below, you'll find a very thought provoking presentation of the issue of externalities and the environmental and human impacts of the hyper-consumer culture and economy, and also a talk by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute about how we can "win the oil end game." Watch them when you have about 15 minutes to view each. The Lovins talk will especially interest anyone in the transportation industry.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/51

(If the second link doesn't work for you, visit TED.com and search "Lovins." This is Amory Lovins on "We must win the oil end game.")

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This may count as my most frivolous Blog entry ever, but I imagine that quite a few of our readers are engineers or at least people with enthusiasm for various kinds of technology. And what I'm about to write may be useful to more than a few of you at some point as I know of at least one company that has advertised with us that sells hand-held gas detection devices that look quite a bit like the gizmos featured in the Star Trek TV series, and I learned in talking to their designers that this was no coincidence and that, in fact, they were serious Trekkies who modelled their equipment on "phaser" guns and so on from that program.

Anyway, there's a new term floating around called "steampunk" that refers to a new trend in which people take modern electronic devices (laptops, computer monitors, electric guitars) and decorate them -- or even rebuild them -- to look like weird 19th Century-type inventions (i.e., with brass fittings and decorative hinges and so on) reminiscent of the steam locomotive era; hence the term "steampunk."

I have pasted some URLs below of some websites that celebrate this interesting trend. Take a peek and you'll instantly see what I mean. I really like this stuff, especially the first website with the "brass" computer monitor. I also think the ladies' laptop is amazing.

Steampunk is a take-off on "cyberpunk" -- the techno-dystopian genre with cybernetics and so forth epitomized in the Matrix film trilogy. Steampunk is characterized by the Wellsian aesthetic of 19th-century technology deployed in crazy, modern ways. There are novels and so forth written like this, and even a game puckishly called Space: 1889.

If you want to see this concept taken to the ultimate level, go see the excellent new movie, The Golden Compass. The whole film is populated with this kind of retro-futuristic equipment, from the compass itself -- called an "alethiometer" to fanciful dirigibles and so on. Even if you don't see the movie, check out the official website and you'll get a sense of how it all looks.

http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/

I have a very modern condo and yet I also have various 19th-century-style brass instruments like an astrolabe or sextant and so on that I got at the Bombay Company store. Makes me think I should keep them and display after all.

I think steampunk speaks to our contemporary relationship with technology and the desire for a human connection with the machines with which we interact. Just think of how many hours in a day each of us interacts with machines: computers, cars, kitchen appliances, Blackberry or iPod-type devices.

In the 19th century you could physically see and even touch the various gears and components of a machine, or open it up and see its inner workings, even if you didn't completely understand them. Think of a watch or a steam locomotive.

The gasoline engine made things more complicated but technology was still accessible to ordinary people. From the Model T to a 1980s Camero, a mecahnically inclined person could still work "under the hood" of their car, change the oil, or even rebuild and supercharge the engine. Nowadays you need special instruments to read the computerized monitoring equipment in a car. Topping up or changing fluids is still realtively easy, but most of a car's inner workings are impenetrable and it's going to get more complicated as more and more parts of a car become computerized and electronic (including soon-to-be electric motors that will be emissions free and silent).

The next electronic revolution, followed almost right away by the digital computer age, moved technology further and further away from intuitive comprehension. Devices, as everyone knows, have become smaller and thinner, running on microchips whose inner workings are only visible under a microscope. The iPod and the new iPhone best embody the latest developments -- thin, wireless and, for all intents and purposes -- completely magical in terms of how they work. A DVD or thumb drive mysteriously holds all the contents of an encyclopedia, or all the color and sound and drama of a feature movie.

At the same time as all this nano-wirelessness made new devices "cool" (to the extent that they're now wearable fashion objects, and even fetish objects of a kind) it was quite predictable that people would feel nostalgia for the days when they could relate to machines and tools -- a time when the craftsmanship that went into building a device was evident.

It may be that this is the genesis of steampunk, which could become a major trend. Just as electronic and computerized devices are becoming wrist-watch-sized and credit-card thin, a sizable market could erupt to take these same items -- or at least their essential components and flat monitors, etc. -- and integrate them inside deliberately large, heavy, ornate and seemingly hand-crafted housings.

My guess is that if someone opened up a storefront on a fashionable street selling hand-crafted, one of a kind computer accessories they'd make a fortune! Another business might be to supply easy-to-install retrofit kits for people to customize their laptops, Blackberries, iPhones, etc.

Watch for it. (And if you work for a company that designs or builds special equipment, mayube it's time to dump the sleek plastic look of an iPod Nano and replace it with an aesthetic that might find a place in, say, a Jules Verne novel.)

Now here are those URLs:

http://steampunkworkshop.com/lcd.shtml

http://jakeofalltrades.wordpress.com/2007/01/23/test/

http://jakeofalltrades.wordpress.com/2007/01/25/tick-tock-a-steampunk-clock/

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/lady-steampunk/mod-your-laptop-into-a-portable-typewriter-and-adding-machine-275541.php

http://steampunkworkshop.com/steampunk-strat.shtml

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Solid Waste & Recycling magazine contributing editor Usman Valiante -- along with contributing editor Clarissa Morawski -- recently had the opportunity to appear on TV Ontario’s program "The Agenda with Steve Paikin" to discuss “The Calculus of Going Green.” The show focused on the complexities of environmental decision-making (the topics of discussion focused on assessing the relative environmental merits of eating locally produced food, using compact fluorescent bulbs and driving hybrid gasoline-electric cars).

The show opened with an interview with Mr. Bjorn Lomborg – “The Skeptical Environmentalist” as he calls himself. Whatever your thoughts regarding the merits of Mr. Lomborg’s arguments there is no denying that his delivery is highly effective in questioning our priorities in addressing climate change and the flaws in the Kyoto Protocol approach.

Here is the link to the episode page so you can view the interview with Bjorn Lomborg:

http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779042&ts=2007-10-16%2020:00:15.0

(If it does not open when you click on the link please copy and paste it into the address line on your web browser). You can watch the episode by choosing video on the right menu on the episode page.

After that interview our contributing editors appeared with other panelists in a moderated discussion. You can watch that segment here:

http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/tvoutils/globalfiles/VideoPop.cfm?spot_id=3203&sitefolder=theagenda

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I tend not to write in this space about internal matters regarding how our magazine is produced, on the assumption that readers prefer that I focus on industry issues.

However, I'm going to break that rule here because of a new development and in the event that some of you might be interested in how a magazine is physcially put together. Actually, I started out wanting to just mention a small but important change in how our magazine is produced, that will greatly enhance our efficiency and profitability -- one that speaks to how the digital revolution is changing how business is done.

When my partners and I launched our first magazine (HazMat Management) 17 years ago, we wrote or edited articles on early-version PCs. I recall orange glowing letters on a black background, and we had to navigate around in DOS code. It seems like a thousand years ago now, with today's "point and click" technology. (If you can remember ever typing "C:ENTER" you're showing your age.)

My partner Todd Latham and I used to take turns at deadline time sitting at the computer formatting the magazine in Ventura -- the state-of-the art layout software on PCs at the time. (Layout people have always preferred the Mac, and Ventura was a poor cousin to Apple layout software, but it did get the job done.) In those days, it could sometimes take us three or four days working all day and all night to finish the magazine and generate files on floppy disks, which we then took to a pre-press establishment in downtown Toronto, which would convert them to another format (Mac-oriented, I imagine) so they could be printed out as lineotype sheets, each containing a positive image of each page of our magazine.

We would then take these sheets back to the office and carefully cut out photos (that were printed as screen art) with an Exacto-brand surgical knife and, using a wax glue gun and roller, paste them carefully inside the keylines for each image. Since this was all black and white, any color ads and color photos had to be pasted into this set up as a black and white image, and then we'd write "POS" ("For Position Only") in thick black marker across the image. (At the film house -- the next stage -- the technicans would match the four-color film art with these "POS" images and assemble the film manually, using red [i.e., invisible] semi-transparent tape. Black pages were one sheet of film, and four-color pages were, naturally, four pages of film, one for each print color: magenta, cyan, yellow and black.)

Todd and I would have "iron man" contests to see who could work the longest getting the magazine to the film stage. (The things you're prepared to do when you own your own business!) I forget the record, and I forget who established it. I recall that it was me, and that it was a 36-hour shift at the computer, getting up only for pee breaks and coffee. But it might have been Todd. At that time we had an office in a house in the Portuguese part of Toronto, on Salem Avenue off Bloor Street West. I remember several times when I'd been awake for two or more days working and I'd go over to one of the local coffee shops and order a milkshake-size espresso, wait for it to cool down, then chug the whole thing in one go. If bennies had been available, I would have taken them. One time I listened to exotic Portuguese accordion music late at night in one of these shops for about an hour before going back to my desk.

After the hell of typesetting every word, image and comma, and pasting the whole thing up manually, and sending it all off to the film house, we'd go home and sleep for about 16 hours. The sales staff (led by our other partner, Arnie Gess) would get on the phone and call the various advertisers to get their artwork (film or lineotype) sent over, so that it, too, could be forwarded to the film house, and added to the layout. All this manual assembly of paper and film (and wax guns!) is impossible to imagine in the era of digital production, although to some extent ads still have to be rounded up and put in position in the final art.

I recall one time getting very annoyed with Todd about something that seems trivial now, but was a big deal at the time. After generating the film files for lineotype, the only thing you wanted to do was go home and sleep. But I always had to wait around at this file-conversion place downtown for hours and hours while they converted the PC files to the necessary format. It would sometimes take 8, 12, 14 or more hours! I later learned that this was because the establishment used Macs, so the process was terribly slow. We could have taken them to another pre-press house with PCs that could have ripped the files quickly, but this would have cost a couple of dollars extra per page, and Todd was intent on saving money. When I learned how small the savings were, and when I thought of all the timjes I'd waited from, say, midnight until 6:00 am for these files to be converted, I wanted to strangle Todd!

Another off-beat memory I have from those days was the earliest glimmerings of the digital film process. Remember, we initially generated computer files that were then converted to another format, all with the goal of printing off black and white pages to which we added cut outs of the ads and photos, and this was then shipped to the film house to be, literally, photographed. The photographic images were used to generate film, which was then used in a photo-chemical process to produced metal plates which were directly mounted on the printing presses.

The digital glimmering was this: One day I walked into a new pre-press house (one of several that we changed to, in part because we were rather slow paying our bills to suppliers in the early days!). They had an enormous new machine, with the words "HELL SCANNER" on the side. This thing was truly gigantic -- more than the height of a normal room -- and was exotic and European. It must have weighed several tons and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think the name of the machine would make a good title for a sci-fi book, but anyway, that gigantic machine performed, in those days, the same function as your little $79 scanner from Costco today! It performed the amazing new (magical!) function of scanning artwork and making everything digital. (We never made use of it, because we couldn't afford the rates at that time, so we stuck with conventional pre-press production, wax guns and all.)

By the time my partners and I sold our business in 2000 to a division of what was then Hollinger (which had just bought the old Southam Magazine and Information Group), we had already long since stopped with the old lineotype system, and actually had an internal production person who did everything via computer. (There were still a lot of glitches, though, and many late nights spent with him or her figuring our what part of our computer array was screwing up and preventing the correct output of film files. On more than one occasion we lost the entire typeset magazine to computer error -- the production person hadn't backed up the files as they went along, and so lost days and days of work!)

But even in the new Hollinger (now Business Information Group, a division of Glacier Ventures in B.C.) our assigned "art director" has had, all this while, to produce the magazine as computer files that are then sent to a film house where they're coverted (digitally) to film, which is then couriered to our printer (in Winnipeg).

So, my my mind was flooded with all these memories the other day when our publisher Brad O'Brien informed me that we're shifting to a new system for the next magazine edition -- one that uses NO FILM HOUSE! Simply put, our art director Sheila Wilson will place all ads and other artwork in the digital files on her computer, and send the whole job (via email, I imagine, or ftp site,but I don't really know) as a monster-size digital file to the printer. The printer will produce a final color mock-up and courier it to me and Brad so we can take one final look and sign off on the job before the magazine goes on press, Going this route gives us more control over the job (e.g., one less middleman in the process) and will save thousands of dollars per edition in film costs. That's tens of thousands of dollars annually that will go directly to the bottom line, and these reduced costs will boost our profitability (which, these days, is the only form of job security for us non-union folk).

I realize that I am already a dinosaur for the next generation of magazine and media grads from universities and polytechnical colleges. People starting out nowadays will completely take for granted the bleeding edge computer technology that puts everything together in virtual reality. There will be no wax guns or whiteout under the fingernails for them!

One final thought -- all of this reminds me of my own childhood and just how much things have changed in the print media world. I grew up in a newspaper family. My father and stepfather and mother and stepmother were (and some still are) newspaper writers and editors. (They were all on staff at the same time and recently remarried to one another when the old Toronto Telegram folded in 1970. My stepfather was one of the founders of the Toronto Sun, which launched its first edition on the Monday after the Tely folded on a Saturday. I still recall the "wake" my dad held at his apartment for the Tely, and some of the people there getting angry when they learned that Paul Rimstead burned the last edition at a bonfire in a park!)

In those days, the newsroom was a busy and very loud place, unlike today's quiet computer and cuble-land environment. Articles were written on ink and ribbon typewriters, and corrections were made with pencil on paper (remember those thick yellow pencils?). Articles were then (I am not kidding!) rolled into containers and sent Dr.Seuss-like by vaccum tube from the editorial department to other departments, and ultimately down to the "composing room" where technicians would read it and copy it onto printing plates ONE LETTER AT A TIME from little block letters made of lead.

This was an astonishing skill that I witnessed as a child. The fingers of these older fellows would fly as they "composed" each newspaper page in hot lead type. And remember the most amazing thing of all -- because these were print forms, every word and sentence had to be composed in lead type that read BACKWARDS!

I recall that my father Max (since deceased) was the editor of the Telegram and was famous for being able to compose "directly on the stone." Remember that the broadsheet papers in those days would have three, sometimes even four, editions per day. There would be a morning, afternoon and evening edition, and maybe one more if there was a huge news story. The Tely, the Star and the Globe and Mail fought almost to the death to get "the scoop" and I recall that it was against the rules to be a delivery boy for more than one newspaper. You were either a "Tely" kid or a "Star" kid. I never did meet a "Globe" kid!) This meant that the newspaper, and especially the front page, was constantly being updated. So, under deadline pressure and not wanting to bother sketching out a new front page layout, my dad would go down to the composing room and give direction to the print technicians, telling them to start an article here or end an column there, with the whole front page layout in his head, he'd direct them to compose the page in hot lead type on the "stone" (an actual stone tablet onto which the lead type was arranged). What an amazing accomplishment!

(I guess I come by my magazine layout trade honestly!)

Of course, as technology evolved, those old typesetters were eventually out of a job, much as I imagine a lot of the older film house staff will have to find new work or retire early these days, unless they can covert their skills with red tape and Exacto knives into skills using a keyboard and computer monitor.

Closing comment: I'm writing this Blog entry on my laptop from a coffee shop with a wireless internet connection that allows me to connect to my company's server in Toronto. The software will automatically format this entry and post it to our magazine's website. Who would have thought this possible just a few decades ago, in the era of vaccum tubes and typewriters and yellow pencils?

So, good-bye film house! You will be missed!

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A few days ago I posted a Blog entry and also a website news item at www.hazmatmag.com and www.solidwastemag.com about a documentary from the UK entitled The Great Global Warming Swindle, which takes apart the conventional wisdom about man-made climate change.

Not surprisingly, I received emails from various folks who feel the documentary is itself a "swindle" -- a piece of propaganda for the "other side", i.e., the climate change "deniers."

I thought readers would be interested in reading a couple of the more thoughtful of these replies. I have removed the author's names not because they asked me to, but because I haven't made the time to seek their permission. One is a lawyer and one is a consultant and they are both quite well read on the climate change topic and debate. There is an excellent web link among these to a website where people who disliked the Swindle documentary list their objections.

When you're done reading these two letters, I invite you to click at the bottom of this entry to read the extended post, where I've copied and pasted Lawrence Solomon's latest article in his "The Deniers" series (from the FP Comment page in the "Financial Post" section of the National Post newspaper.) Once again, Larry has done an excellent job publicizing science that's highly problematic for the UN International Panel on Climatge Change (IPCC). It turns out that this ice core data is not as reliable as the IPCC has suggested, and other data sets may offer a better history of CO2 in the atmosphere (and paint a picture that is at odds with the IPCC version of things). The "chilling" point of this article (pun intended) is how the scientist got fired for publishing information that runs contrary to received wisdom on climate change, because it created funding problems for his employer. This whole issue of how scientists are shunned or outright fired for publishing contrarian information is (for me) the most telling thing.

Anyway, here are the letters.

Dear Guy,

I watched it. The premise of the 'documentary' seems to be that the
'theory' of man-made global warming is wrong, and that it is perpetuated
because "thousands of jobs depend on it" and "funding for scientific
research depends on it".

Some observations:

Billions of dollars in corporate profits are dependent on continuing to
emit large quantities of toxic pollutants and CO2.

The majority of mainstream media in the developed world is controlled by
conservative interests that are financially locked with large corporations.

A number of the 'authorities' in this film are highly suspect (i.e. look
at where they get their money). For example, Patrick Moore has been
completely discredited and exposed as a corporate mouthpiece for the
nuclear and the GMO food industry.

I could go on.

That having been said, there are a number of things in the film that are
clearly true. Science IS very political. There are some credible,
independent scientists who are genuinely skeptical about the link
between human activity and global warming. The majority of the people
who are up in arms about global warming have at best a superficial
understanding of the subject (people crave simple, easy to understand
answers to complex problems, even if these answers are wrong).

However, I believe that the only sane way to approach issues like this
is with an open but skeptical mind, and a consistent application of the
precautionary principle.

Net: This is a propaganda film for sure. I wonder who financed it?
Following the money is always interesting and enlightening.

In closing, the possibilities are:

1. The skeptics are right, and either global warming doesn't exist or it
is not influenced in any significant way by human activity;
2. Global warming is real and human activity is a significant
contributor to it.

If we cut back on our greenhouse gas emissions it will cost us a LOT of
money that we would otherwise spend on _________. You fill in the blank,
but I guarantee that it will not be combating poverty or some other
noble cause. In this case, if the skeptics are right, the money could
have been spent on _________. If global warming is real, our species
(and most of the others that share the planet with us) will be better
off (i.e. we may survive).

If we do not cut back on our greenhouse gas emissions, and the skeptics
are right, we will have spent all that money on ___________ and reaped
the benefits. If global warming is real, not to be too dramatic about
it, but we are screwed as a species.

To me, given the trade off, the sane course of action is clear. However,
if we don't care a fig about future generations, our generation can
probably enjoy more material comforts by plowing ahead on our current
course. And as Fred Reed once said, "Inability has always been more of a
check on human activity than wisdom."

Other commentary:

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/0313pure_propaganda_the.php

Dear Guy,

The fact that I am writing this from my office while I should be practicing law (I know its almost midnight) gives you some idea that I think the attention to the "Swindle" may be a swindle.

A couple suggestions. Weigh the "Swindle" against other sources - do not accept its information as gospel (and perhaps not even as considered) - I do not think it really challenges much except the urge not to think critically.

One web site that you may find interesting is the link below that I found by "googling" climate change swindle and "debunking". I am not suggesting that it is the greatest source (I have not double checked its facts) but it does provide some counterarguments and I am not so sure that the "Swindle" producers double checked all their sources.

http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1820

Consider:

A review of the journal articles noted in The Weather Makers adds to ones breadth of knowledge. For instance, the Science article that explains that (contrary to the, until recently, conventional wisdom) the glaciers in Patagonia are indeed shrinking.

Another thought….where are the follow ups on the swindle and is the worlds scientific community really so easily duped (consider the IPCC which included scientists from the US and Australia - those bastions of critical political thought on climate change).

I note with interest the recent American studies regarding the shrinking polar sea ice cap. It was considered obvious to all in my undergrad climatology class (20 years ago) that if there is less ice at the poles the albedo will decrease and the absorption of energy by the oceans at the poles increases. No scientific disagreement that if the polar caps melt the place will get fairly warm.

The current issue of NewsScientist reports that the near surface ocean temperature decline over the last couple years is explained away. Apparently, they changed the type of ocean based temperature sensors a couple of years ago but did not properly calibrate the new equipment to the old. So at first it looked as though the temperatures in the near surface levels of the oceans had decreased which is now known not to have been the case.

I really could go on but I have to get back to the salt mines….I probably wouldn't spend this much time but you have a good soapbox and I want to share these thoughts with you. I am not so sure that the "Swindle" will turn out to be good journalism with the benefit of hindsight.

I would bet a Guinness that in 30 years climate change and the cause is even more obvious. That said, I really do not want to collect on the bet….we can go Dutch but I will say "I told you so".

Continue reading "Problems with the Ice Core data" »

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Please find below the link to the video documentary you may have heard about from the UK entitled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." Be prepared to have your assumptions about global warming seriously rocked by this documentary. I was told it was just some piece of reactionary propaganda, but guess what? It's a very serious and convincing piece of journalism and a welcome antidote to Al Gore and his film An Inconvenient Truth. This should be mandatory viewing for anyone who cares to voice an opinion on the global warming topic as it debunks a lot of myths and offers a compelling explanation of the role of solar wind, cosmic rays and water vapor in the atmosphere. I was especially struck by the detailed evidence that a rise in CO2 follows (not leads) natural warming trends going back millenia. I was also struck by the "case closed" science that a slightly warmer earth will see fewer, less violent storms, not the opposite claimed by proponents of the anthropgenic warming theory.

I really enjoyed it and hope you do, too. Watch it and make up your own mind!

Here's the link:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4499562022478442170

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I thought readers might be interested in notes I made at Americana 2007, where I was the "waste analyst" for the conference sessions pertaining to waste management. Despite spending quite a bit of time on the trade show floor, I managed to attend many of the conference sessions, and certainly all the sessions that struck me as the most interesting. The event generated what may be a year's worth of article leads! So watch for some interesting material in upcoming editions of our magazines.

At the request of the conference organizers, I gathered my notes into the form of a short article that will be edited into a forthcoming edition of a Quebec-based environmental services magazine -- Vecteur environnement. Thanks to my hosts, also, at RÉSEAU environnement, the environmental trade association that organized the conference and trade show, and especially Raphael Bruneau who introduced me around and invited me to the final luncheon where I appeared on a wrap-up panel with "analysts" from other conference streams.

Reflections on the Waste Management sessions of Americana 2007

By Guy Crittenden, waste analyst

The conference sessions at Americana 2007 that concerned solid waste management, taken as a whole, suggested that the industry is in a period of quite dramatic transition -- from a previous system in which the only value of garbage was the collection, transportation and disposal fees charged by waste haulers, to a new system in which waste is regarded as a valuable resource. The new market for waste is dynamic and is being influenced by new technologies such as those that better sort recyclable or compostable materials from the waste stream, and thereby divert them from landfill disposal, and those that capture the energy embodied in waste, such as thermal treatment systems for garbage residuals, and systems to capture methane gas at landfills to generate power.

Simply put, an industry that used to be merely a low-tech municipal service is now going high-tech and is increasingly attracting investment from the private sector.

Opinions differ, however, as to what the value of waste really is, and from the different presentations one could detect some important and conflicting trends that will play themselves out in the decade to come.

For example, the audience was treated to an excellent presentation from a technology company, Plasco, which has built a demonstration facility in Ottawa that uses plasma arc torches to destroy waste. The company is currently in the testing and ramp-up stage to full operation, and results will be interesting to monitor in the summer of 2007. The value proposition of the technology is that it uses computer systems to control the blended feedstock of raw garbage and plastic to create just the right gaseous fuel to drive special combustion engines. This control of the fuel – waste that needs minimal preparation – may allow Plasco to succeed where other plasma-based systems have failed, for technical and/or economic reasons. In any case, the technology was one of several presented at the conference that illustrate the leading edge of innovation in waste disposal.

Plasco also illustrates another important trend, and that is the recognition of the BTU value – the embodied energy – in waste. This has already been recognized by the engineers of conventional mass-burn incinerators, who regularly refer to their systems as “waste-to-energy” and, in the best and most efficient examples (e.g., Sweden) generate both electricity and steam. The trick, though, has been to use technology to clean the emissions from such systems so that they represent a reduced threat to human health and the environment, and to use technology to garner public acceptance of such facilities by the public in their jurisdictions.

In that regard, the presentation from David Merriman of MacViro Consultants was interesting. Merriman led the audience on a compelling journey through the history of waste disposal in the Greater Toronto Area, where several important projects are under development. It was a convoluted tale, but the gist was that Toronto and the surrounding regions are diverting as much waste as possible through recycling and composting, and at least one area (York Region) plans to build a large waste-to-energy plant. (There was some discussion at the conference that perhaps conventional mass burn may be just as effective as gasification and other higher-tech systems, at a lower cost.)

However, another set of values also informed the discussion, as was evident from certain presentations and especially in questions from the audience. There’s an entirely different sense of “value” that many people see in waste that doesn’t view as beneficial the capture of a relatively small amount of energy via thermal treatment. In fact, there’s a school of thought that even the most successful waste-to-energy schemes are a poor idea, because they encourage the notion that we can continue consuming the earth’s resources and then just make our waste byproducts “go away.”

Proponents of this alternative view regard any material sent for disposal as a poorly-allocated resource. In their opinion, change needs to occur upstream at the manufacturing and natural resource extraction stage. Anything that can’t be recycled or composted or reused, they would argue, shouldn’t be produced in the first place. An efficient and effective municipal waste disposal system, in their view, is really a subsidy to companies that foist their packaging and built-for-obsolescence products on the taxpayer.

This philosophy, sometimes called the “zero waste” movement, looks at the entire lifecycle of products and places emphasis on packaging redesign and such things as renewable energy. A zero waste proponent would never regard a plastic soft drink bottle burned in a waste-to-energy plant as the appropriate consumption of “renewable” energy. Primarily due to climate change concerns, the link between consumption and environmental impacts is increasingly being understood by the public and policymakers, and producer responsibility systems (rather than efficient waste disposal) are the solution advocated by zero waste proponents.

Proper markets are needed for materials diverted from landfill (e.g., metal, plastic and fibre, and also compostable organics). For this reason the last panel discussion was especially interesting. Representatives from five different municipalities across Canada presented on the different technologies and approaches they are implementing to manage waste, and especially to divert it from landfill. One had the sense of Canada as a vast laboratory in which different experiments are being conducted on waste, analogous to different steam engines being developed in England during the industrial revolution. (Edmonton’s co-composting facility and new gasifier are a good example.)

Most importantly, each jurisdiction is struggling with the new economic equation for waste and, to be honest, not yet fully making the connection between the value of what is diverted from disposal and proper markets. Some could not find markets for their source-separated organics (e.g., kitchen scraps). Indeed, not one of them charged a user fee (“bag tag”) for waste placed at the curb, and most often the cost of garbage disposal was hidden in municipal tax bills, among charges for other services.

It was clear that waste reduction and greater recycling and composting will occur when cities and towns charge a visible fee – i.e., a price signal – to waste, that rewards people for doing the “right thing” (diversion) and tolls them for the “wrong thing” (waste).

Realistically one can conclude that the era of zero waste will only come as the second part of a two-step process. We are half-way through the first step – poised to soon divert as much as 60 to 70 per cent of waste from disposal via both high-tech and low-tech recycling and composting, and then dispose of the residuals in thermal treatment plants, anaerobic digesters or stabilized landfills. The days of the old low-tech dump are almost over. When that step is complete (and perhaps a bit sooner), society will be ready to drive change up the production line to the point of the manufacturer or brand owner, and this will prevent many materials from entering the waste stream in the first place. Only then will we be able to say we have moved from consumerism to sustainability.

Guy Crittenden is editor of Solid Waste & Recycling magazine and HazMat Management magazine. He can be reached at gcrit@bizinfogroup.ca

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A news item caught my attention today (posted at the end of this entry). Toronto Mayor David Miller has stated he would consider tolling city roads -- as London England did, with great success -- in order to reduce commuting, downtown congestion and smog.

The London mayor who introduced tolling in that city was actually a left-wing mayor (like Miller) and the concept, which is market-oriented, was anathema to his political followers, who decried it as a tax on the poor and said it wouldn't work. Well, it did work. I have been to London twice in recent years and, while there is traffic, there is very little congestion, even during rush hour. The tolls place a "price" on driving downtown from outside the city. If people want to do it, they can, but they pay. Because it's not considered "free" people who have other options (public transit, not going downtown, taking taxis) use them, and the roads are less congested.

Tollling makes sense, if properly implemented, because it solves the "tragedy of the commons" where cars are concerned. When taxes pay for the construction of roads, people perceive their use of those roads as a right, and that their actions are without cost. But when too many cars clog the streets, there is in fact a cost -- loss to the economy from all those thousands of people sitting idle in traffic, wear and tear to the roadways themselves, and (most important) the cost in health care and environmental degradation from smog. It's excellent public policy to recognize this "cost" and to put a "price" on it. The price (market) signal turns the roadways into a market, rather than a commons.

Over time, people adjust their behavior according to the market signals. When the roadways are perceived as free, people behave perfectly rationally -- competing to squeeze out as much of their share of the free public good as they can (by using the roads during peak hours, commuting, etc.). It's utterly predictable that "free" roads encourage suburban sprawl. If you can buy a house in exurbia for, say, two-thirds the price of that same house downtown, and your only penalty is to have to drive a bit more every day and not have access to public transit for your work commute, you will logically move to the cheaper suburban house because you can pay off your mortgage much faster and, besides, enjoy a more "bucolic" existence away from the "trafficy" downtown. (Okay, many people will not make this choice, but a glance at any map of the GTA and it's enormous low-density suburbs shows that millions of people will.

But if you turn the commons into a market, if the roads are suddenly not "free" (at least, the downtown roads) then the equation changes. People don't so readily assume that it makes sense to live far apart from where they work. ?The cost of the impact of their behavior is no longer externalized onto taxpayers (in the form of road repairs, road construction, hospital care, etc.) or the general economy (the drag of millions of person-hours wasted in traffic). The cost is internalized directly back to the consumer of the service (the driver on the road).

There's a further benefit. Not only are costs being appropriately assigned to users of the system, but the system itself changes -- it self-corrects. The very traffic congestion that inspired the tolls begins to melt away as people re-order their affairs. In the short-term, they drive less often to the city. They start to car-pool (i.e., share costs). More than any amount of proslytizing from government (nanny state nagging) could accomplish about the value of car pooling, people do it because it saves them money. Aha! The same force that inspires them to turn down their thermostat or turn off lights in empty rooms, or comparison shop for cheaper shoes, gets them to do the "right thing for the environment." They discover the "Kiss-N-Ride" and jump on the commuter train. They take cabs, trains, buses, street cars, bicycles and (gosh!) they even walk!

Over the long term, the appeal of living in the suburbs and working downtown diminishes. Or, more correctly, people make decisions to follow such a pattern with the correct pricing in their heads. One can imagine that real estate values in urban cores -- even the cores of suburban areas -- will more perfectly reflect the value that one can work/shop/play in close proximity, and the values of outlying properties will be diminished. Butthis doesn't mean that the suburbds will become wastelands, ghettos. The opposite should occur: As municipal politicians see the new pattern, they will introduce planning rules to encourage density, thereby turning each suburban node into a small dense city unto itself, rather than a mere add-on to The Big Smoke. This is precisely what is happening now in the Town of Markham (where i once lived), which is a sad example of low-density sprawl that is reinventing itself and literally dropping a high-density core into its new "city centre." Light rapid transit and other public infrastructure will reinforce the idea over time that you can live in Markham, work there, and play, and only go downtown once in a while of other big city pleasures.

If this same mechanism is applied to other "free" services, a virtuous cycle should ensue. Markham, for instance, is introducing a user-pay system for garbage (bag tags), in combination with free (tag-less) collection of recyclable materials and organic waste. Unsurprisingly, the town is closing in on its goal of diverting 60 per cent of solid waste from landfill. The town already meters water consumption, which appears as a (not buried) line item on bills. Gas and electricity consumption is already metered by suppliers (including discounters with long-term contractual plans that lock in prices). Imagine the further advances that will be achieved in Markham and every other town and city when each appliance in each household is equipped with "smart meters" telling the owner/user exactly how much it's costing them -- in real time -- to use power for a given period. Again, pricing behavior appropriately will lead people to behave rationally, if they're provided a rational context.

If I know, for instance, that it will cost me half as much in electricty pricing to run my dishwasher during the night, while I'm asleep, I will take the time to figure out the slightly complicated digital setting on the front of the machine to make this happen. I will even dig out the owner's manual, or search for it online (by keying in the product name or description). Whereas such a task once sat idle on the endless "to do" task list (along with trimming the hedge in the front yard, or replacing the burnt-out back porch light), it now moves onto my priority "action list" for today, because of pricing. Smart metering will cause me to operate my clothes washer and dryer during non-peak hours for the same reason.

But again, there are other benefits and changes that will occur, that movefrom the individual to the systemic. For example, I will likely take a keen interest in the energy efficiency of every appliance that I own or purchase. I'll start to pay attention to the stickers on these machines, and the issue will become part of my research into what I will buy, beyond bottom-line price and styling. I might decide to retire the inefficient beer fridge in the basement when I learn that it's the single greatest power consumer in my home, sucking up power senselessly day and night. And that's just the "low-hanging fruit." I will eventually replace my standard incandescent light bulbs with fluorescents. I will buy rechargeable batteries instead of throwaways. I will install water-saving shower heads. And I may in fact do away with certain appliances altogether, or use them less. (I have recently discovered that it takes only slighly more time to wash dishes than load and empty the dishwasher. And since it makes for a good "chore" for my kids, it costs me nothing personally.)

Now let's switch to the view from ten thousand feet. If I'm doing this, millions of other people will be as well. Our combined rational behavior in the new system takes many many megawatts of consumption off the grid. But more importantly, market forces smooth out the peaks and valleys of power consumption. And, since electricty production and consumption is virtually instantaneous, new power plants are not required. The existing system can meet demand and even be in surplus, because infrastructure adequately serves the robust "middle" of consumption, rather than strain to meet peak demand (e.g., everyone cranking up their air conditioners on a hot summer's day, and running their dishwashers at the same time, etc., etc.).

And then the planners and the suppliers of power are under less pressure to build mega-projects based on worst-case demand scenarios, and can invest in a more diverse -- dare I say "green" -- array of options. Many people in Ontario, for example, are already buying their power from Bull Frog -- an alternative energy supplier that emphasizes hydroelectricty and wind, etc.

So I've extrapolated quite an arc of opportunities from the initial example of road tolls. Beyond municipal services like roads, drinking water and wastewater treatment, power supply, garbage collection and so on, many further opportunities exist in the realm of such things as extended producer responsibility for packaging, electronics and other products. I haven't even touched on trading/credit systems for emissions, that bring market discipline to another perceived "free" commons -- the atmosphere. But an interesting tie-in, in that regard, is that Toronto Mayor Miller's motivation to introduce road tolls is not directly about relieving traffic congestion, but rather to help get the city into compliance with its own four-year goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change impact.

The the very macro climate change issue is triggering very micro level policy instruments. A perfect example of "think globally, act locally." I believe that over time, more and more environmental activists will embrace market solutions to environmental problems, as command and control regulation proves to be an approach with certain limitations -- namely that it punishes bad behavior rather than reward correct (or, I should say, rational) behavior.

Continue reading "Road tolls, market forces and climate change" »

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CSR:Corporations Supporting Recycling has recently issued two news releases expressing opposition to, and concern about, the Province of Ontario's decision to place LCBO wine and liquor containers on deposit, starting in the New Year. Details about the new deposit program are explained in recent news items in Headline News at the website for Solid Waste & Recycling magazine: www.solidwastemag.com

CSR says that the deposit system will harm the blue box curbside recycling programs and investment in glass recycling infrastructure. The CSR's point of view differs from that of various other organizations, including those that represent the interests of municipalities (Association of Municipaities of Ontario, or "AMO") and also the province's recycling coordinators (Association of Municipal Recycling Coordinators, or "AMRC") who administer the blue box progam. AMO and AMRC, as well as other entities like the Recycling Council of Ontario (RCO) and the Municipal Waste Integration Network (MWIN) have published formal position papers supporting the idea of placing LCBO containers on deposit. I've reproduced the CSR news releases below (click on the green link) so that readers may view them.

Continue reading "CSR opposes LCBO deposits" »

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Here's an odd article but very detailed and interesting for our understanding of the carbon cycle. I've always wanted a detailed explanation of how phytoplankton convert atmospheric CO2 into their skeletons, and how this eventually re-enters either the ocean water (through absorption) or drifts down to the sea bed, where it becomes calcium carbonate (limestone). turns out, the link is "salps" that migrate vertically thousands of feet each day to feed on phytoplankton at the ocean surface. When they die, or when larger fish eat them and they in turn die, the skeletons sink to the ocean floor. Salp blooms take vast amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere and ocean every day, and play a role in limiting CO2 levels in the atmosphere. I wonder if stimulating growth of more of these creatures could offset fossil fuel emissions? Anyway, here's the article, courtesy of Yahoo.

Ocean "Gummy Bears" Fight Global Warming

By Robin Lloyd
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.com
Sat Jul 22, 8:15 AM ET

Swarms of lowly thumb-sized ocean creatures that often resemble chains of transparent Gummy Bears play a critical role in transporting a greenhouse gas deep into the deep sea, scientists report.

The semi-transparent barrel-shaped creatures, called salps, emerge by the billions in groups that occupy as much as 38,600 square miles of the sea surface (about the size of the state of Indiana), Laurence Madin of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution wrote in a newly published study.

Madin and his colleagues have now estimated that "hotspots" of salps could spell a dead-end for carbon, transporting tons of it daily from the ocean surface to the deep sea and preventing it from re-entering the atmosphere and contributing again to the greenhouse effect and possibly to global warming.

In and out

Scientists have long known that ocean water and marine creatures absorb excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, much of which results from the fossil fuels we burn.

Tiny marine plants called phytoplankton extract the carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide to build their skeletons and shells. Larger ocean animals then eat the phytoplankton. When the animals die or defecate, the carbon dissolves back into the oceans.

Salps are among the larger creatures that eat phytoplankton, consuming up to 74 percent of them from the surface water in a day. The salps then defecate, and their sinking pellets transport up to 4,000 tons of carbon daily to deeper water.

"Salps swim, feed and produce waste continuously," said Madin, who headed up the study recently published in the journal Deep Sea Research. "They take small packages of carbon and make them into big packages that sink fast."

[In a separate study, giant ocean "snot balls" were found to use a different method to same end.]

Round trip

Salps move through water by drawing water in one end and propelling it out the other, sort of like jet propulsion.

Madin and his colleagues at the University of Connecticut and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science have stalked a species of salps, Salpa aspera, along the Eastern Seaboard on at least four occasions over the past 30 or so years. They collected salps with trawling nets and by hand while scuba diving and found that this species can form dense swarms that last for months. With video and other lab methods, they were able to estimate the size of swarms, their feeding rate, their defecation rate and their impact on the local population of phytoplankton.

Previous research showed that these salps swim to dark, deep ocean recesses by day, usually around 2,000 to 2,600 feet deep, and back up to the surface at night—something called vertical migration.

"At the surface, salps can feed on phytoplankton," Madin said. "They may swim down in the day to avoid predators or damaging sunlight."

Surfacing at night allows them to come together for reproduction and multiply quickly when food is abundant, he said.

Deep deposits

The result is that salps release fecal pellets in deep water, where few animals consume them, making them efficient transporters of carbon away from the atmosphere.

Salp pellets can sink even more than half a mile per day. And when they die, salp bodies take carbon down with them, sink rapidly up to a quarter mile a day.

Different species of salps have also been documented in recurring dense swarms in waters off Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa, the southeastern United States, the Western Mediterranean Sea, the eastern North Atlantic Ocean and the Southern Ocean.

Scientists still don't know how often salp swarms emerge, but it is clear that they can quickly take advantage of sudden blooms of phytoplankton, efficiently feeding on them with their mucus membrane filters and growing rapidly. Swarms can emerge in just a few weeks, to the point where they interfere with fishing, Madin said.

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You've likely encountered recent media coverage of Canada's Federal Environment Minister Donna Ambrose and her government's admission (to its citizens and international bodies) that it's unrealistic for Canada to attain its Kyoto commitments, and that the country instead will develop a "made-in-Canada" solution to lower global warming gas emissions. Ambrose has been criticized for this, and for lacking leadership on the climate change portfolio.

A couple of things are worth noting as you think about this unfolding issue. (As an aside, I've come around to thinking we should participate in Kyoto and do our share, but with some qualifiers as per below.) And remember, this is an issue that will affect the trucking and transportation sector heavily, although it's important to recall also that most of our CO2 emissions come from stationary power production (especially coal-fired plants) and from oil and gas production (especially the Alberta oil sands).

1) The Liberals under Jean Chretien put forward an emissions target that was determined without any meaningful assessment of what we could or could not do, and what effect it might have on the economy. In 1997, the target was set to cut emissions by 6 per cent below 1990 levels (to be attained by 2012). Instead, our emissions have already grown to 34.6% above that target.

2) In reality, what drove Canada to choose the 6% reduction target was simply that Chretien and his crew wanted to show up the Americans (this is documented) who were negotiating a 5% reduction target. Chretien simply wanted to be able to claim that Canada was 1% more stringent than its neighbors to the south.

3) Ironically (and predictably) the Americans never signed on or ratified Kyoto. There has never been any support whatsoever for Kyoto ratification in the U.S. senate, and every poll of senators reveals that all but one or two would refuse. It's just a non-starter there. So here we are, having agreed to an arbitrary target set to only to outdo the U.S., which isn't even in the Kyoto Accord.

4) Like Australia, Canada's economy is disproportionately resource based, particularly in regard to oil and gas production. We encourage immigration and have a rising population. Our situation is totally different than that of the moribund economies of France and Germany, etc. that lack our oil and gas export businesses and whose populations are not growing, and are in fact aging into a Japan-like negative growth scenario. I'm not saying this means we shouldn't do anything about climate change, but we negotiated a target without any maeningful analysis of what it meant to our economy versus that of the other signatories.

5) Canada was really the naive "boy scout" at the negotiating table. The UK was able to meet its commitments easily by shutting down inefficient coal-fired plants that it planned to close anyway. Germany did the same thing after it merged with Eastern Germany and closed the old Soviet-style factories and energy plants. We certainly don't have easy options like that.

6) The most infuriating thing is that it's come out that pretty much all along, the federal bureaucrats and the Liberal government at the time knew perfectly well that the Kyoto targets would not be met. They simply wanted to adopt the "pose" of being environmentally superior, without actually doing anything. In that sense, at least Ambrose's statements are honest, and she's taking the rap for revealing what essentially amounts to a cover up by the previous government.

7) I met a fellow from Natural Resources Canada at a conference recently who admitted that there are whole offices and floors of buildings filled with staff who formerly worked on Kyoto "programs" who now do nothing but sit around and play cards all day. (He was serious!) I told him that they (without government money!) should get off their butts and start companies to solve global warming problems. My first suggestion was a company to manufacture and install "smart meters" for household appliances. Such devices are being put into California homes right now, and allow a person to monitor, in real time, how much power each appliance is drawing and the cost per Kilowatt hour. These meters encourage people to switch out old appliances for new energy efficient ones, and to use them during non-peak times (e.g., put the clothes or dishwasher on after midnight). If everyone used these and did this, we wouldn't need much in the way of new energy plants for the foreseeable future, because the "peak use" would be smoothed out.

8) Canada actually is in a great position to reduce its emissions, whether or not it does so to comply with Kyoto. A lot of how we do this relates to how we develop the oil sands, because if we use natural gas to melt the bitumen and just release all the CO2 from the gas production and the oil melting into that air, we will be WAY out of compliance. But the technology exists to capture that CO2 and sequester it underground. Interestingly, Saskatchewan has the perfect underground geological formations to pump liquified CO2, and has enough storage room for all the world's CO2. We're in a great position to demonstrate to the world how to produce oil from the Alberta oil sands and sequester the carbon underground. This is a techique and a service Canada could offer worldwide.

9) Finally, there are some interesting technologies out there that can help us out. For example, it's possible to obtain natural gas from coal and burn it for power, then capture the CO2 and sequester it. Yes, a lot of engineering challenges remain to be solved, but this is a lot easier than, for instance, figuring out nuclear power. Canada could cut its emissions dramatically and become a world leader (and vendor) in the field of producing CO2-free power from oil, gas and gas-from-coal. What's missing right now is leadership, and I think the federal government is afraid to alienate its western voter base by pushing hard on this issue. Hopefully that will change because there's both a power and an environmental "win" available to us if we move on these ideas.

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Here's an interesting development from the world of recycling, in this case the hauling of papermill sludge (a byproduct of paper recycling) and disposing of it on land. It's worth thinking about whether what you're hauling is a material or, sometimes, a waste.

There was a public rally yesterday to protest the land application of papermill sludge at a site near Pelham, Ontario. The rally points up the fact that Ontario's Environment Minister Laurel Broten has not followed through with the full application of recommendations from an expert panel assigned to study appropriate handling and disposal of papermill sludge.

A letter I received via email from activist Maureen Reilly outlines the position of people opposed to the casual land application of papermill sludge, who are calling for the implementation of the expert panel's recommendations. I've reproduced the letter below with minimal editing, and I've also cut and pasted two other things Maureen sent me: a Hansard transcript of an exchange in the legislature over this issue and also the expert panel's recommendations.

Dear Guy:

There was a big picket line in the rural community of Pelham, Ontario yesterday, as residents expressed their anger and concern about hundreds of truck loads of industrial papermill sludge dumped in their community. The Ministry of the Environment has failed to implement the recommendations of their own panel of scientists, physicians and experts as to how to manage this sludge material. The experts told the Minister to manage the material as a waste.

Instead the material is dumped in rural communities with no waste permits whatsoever.

Despite this, Laurel Broton, the Ontario Minister of the Environment, rose in the House to answer questions from Oppositon member Peter Kormos, and lied to the Legislature.

She said:

"I think it’s important for the people of the community to understand what the expert panel did say. The government’s actions are exactly consistent with what the expert panel said. "

OH REALLY?

1. The Expert Panel said that any proposed site to receive the Sound-Sorb material needed a hydrogeological assessment before the sludge arrived. It said a Site Specific Risk Assessment may also need to be undertaken.

So where is the hydrogeological assessment for Pelham? Where is the Site Specific Risk Assessment for Pelham?

2. The Expert Panel said the sludge needed to be managed as a waste under a Certificate of Approval.

So where is the Certificate of Approval for the site? Why is the sludge hauled by trucks with no waste licence?

3. The Expert Panel said the sludge needed to be composted before it was brought to the site.

In fact uncomposted sludge is being brought to the site...so it is not consistent with the recommendations of the Expert Panel.

4. The Minister suggested that the sludge at Pelham had been tested for 90 chemical and bacterial parameters.

But the Ontario Minsitry of the Environment refused to provide any test results on the sludge at the Pelham site, and it is not clear that any testing was done at the site. The tests referred to by the Minister are not the same sludge as at the Pelham site. This sludge comes from Abitibi Thorold, a completely different facility than the tests provided to the Expert Panel which were from Atlantic Packaging in Scarborough and Whitby.

And since Sound-Sorb is may contain any liquid, industrial or hazardous waste there is no telling what hazardous waste material is being brought to any particular site.

Conclusion:

The minister should publicly apologize to the Legislature for lying. And the minister should be forced to read aloud the true recommendations of the Expert Panel in the Legislature and immediately implement them.

Hansard and expert panel recommendations are pasted below.

Continue reading "The fight over papermill sludge" »

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