Metro Vancouver has just completed four regional public forums and a webinar on solid waste management options for our region and would like to continue the conversation.

You’re invited to share your comments from one of the forums or the webinar, make suggestions on how to better orchestrate our next sessions, provide your viewpoint, or ask questions related to the issues that were presented.

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Regional Public Forums

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In 2007, about 3.6 million tonnes of solid waste was generated in Metro Vancouver.  The region recycled or diverted about two million tonnes of that waste from landfills and the region’s Waste-to-Energy Facility in Burnaby. That’s a waste diversion rate of 55 percent, which is far higher than most Canadian municipalities.

But Metro Vancouver’s Board of Directors has adopted the “Zero Waste Challenge” as its priority – a bold commitment to reduce solid waste in the region to the absolute minimum, and to extract the maximum practical benefits from discarded material.

On May 29, 2009, the Board of Directors directed staff to prepare a draft Solid Waste Management Plan that incorporates a waste diversion target of 70 percent by the year 2015. 

Waste management practitioners recognize this to be a visionary and ambitious target, matching or exceeding the best practice achieved anywhere in the world. But even if this target is achieved, every year more than one million tonnes of solid waste or garbage that cannot be practically and economically recycled will still be delivered to the region by the municipalities and the private sector for disposal.

1995 Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP)
The Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP) is a region-wide approach to managing garbage – also known as “municipal solid waste” – adopted by the Board of Directors and approved by the provincial government in 1995.

Solid Waste Management Plan Update
Building on the Zero Waste Challenge initiative, Metro Vancouver is updating the 1995 plan. The SWMP updates will focus on three goals:

• minimizing waste generation;
• maximizing the reuse, recycling and material/energy recovery from solid waste; and,
• extracting maximum benefit from the disposed waste stream.

Metro Vancouver currently diverts 55 percent of the waste it generates away from disposal. At the core of the SWMP update is Metro Vancouver’s goal of a 70 percent diversion rate, and the strategies and actions needed to achieve this.