Ian Gartshore

Nanaimo’s heart and soul of recycling may be facing its demise. While the NRE has inspired citizens, businesses, the city and the regional district to adopt strong   waste-recovery practises, leading by example and helping to extend the life of the local landfill -costing us virtually nothing-, the NRE may be discarded early next year. Why? Because the majority of the Nanaimo city councillors have been convinced that the NRE is the responsibility of the Regional District of Nanaimo (the RDN) while the Directors of the RDN are being steered by their staff to believe that the NRE is, in essence, not required. The NRE primarily benefits residents and businesses in Nanaimo, yet technically its mandate falls under the RDN solid waste management. Yet the city utterly relies on the NRE to bolster its own recycling & composting initiatives. In fact the NRE is the principal waste recovery place to which the city’s website directs residents –because it is truly the one-stop centre,

Should Nanaimo be the site to burn garbage from the lower mainland? As I see it: Pro: As an energy advisor I know that the more local source of electricity we generate the more stable the electrical grid becomes.  The proposed plant would yield little actual power output; not much more than the potential of power being generated from our drinking water supply (gravity-fed from the mountains). But every bit of power counts. It is FAR better to burn garbage than it is to landfill it in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Why? Rotting compostable materials in the absence of oxygen (typical in dumps) create enormous amounts of methane gas, thousands of times more powerful in changing climate than is the carbon dioxide created when incinerating the same material. Local construction and maintenance jobs would be created. Local garbage could be incinerated. The waste heat could be used by another facility (which would then be responsible for the emissions, giving the i