Trip to landfill has one man asking if recycling efforts going to waste

A central Newfoundland man says a recent trip to the Norris Arm landfillis a harsh reminder that just because something canbe recycleddoesn't mean it stays out of the ground.

Graham Woodof Indian Arm Pondwas at the regional waste management site earlier this month to get rid of a moose hide, but he was surprised by the contents he found there.

"A huge amount of plastic. People are just dumping everything," said Wood.

"What I saw was a very poor job of waste management."

Woodtook some photos of the landfill site andposted themonFacebook, where they have been shared by more than 800 people.

Other items at the site included a lotof plastic containers, like detergent and water bottles.

"There was blue bags and white bags all dumped in the landfill site, and the tractor just goes over and squashes it down," said Wood.

"I don't think we're really doing much with the recycling."

Most surprising, and confounding, Wood said, was the25 or 30 bundles of the Saltwire newspaperCentral Voice, which appear to have been dumped without even being distributed to readers.

Diverting waste since 2012

But Central Newfoundland Waste Managementdisputes Wood's assessment of the recycling program.

Ed Evans, chief administrative officer, saidthere is somecontamination of the blue bag stream, but he said CNWM is successful in finding a market for about 15 per cent of plastics coming to Norris Arm.

That's comparable with other facilities in Atlantic Canada, he said.

Evans said that, on average, the lined landfill in Norris Armaccepts about 200 tonnes of waste per day, which works out to about 65,000 tonnes per year at the six-day-a-week operation.

Evans confirms that certain types of plastic do get trashed, including the blue bags themselves.

"A lot of that is going to be a plastic line that has no marketplace," said Evans.

As for the undistributed newspaper bundlesthat ended up in the landfill, Evans said they were rejected by the recycling contractor because of the plastic band around them.

Evans said he's reached out to Saltwire to ensure that future newspapers sent to Norris Arm can be quickly freed up to be recycled.

Saltwire did not respond to CBC's request for a comment on the issue.

'Modern' system

Evans said while it may not be a perfect system, it's an improvement over how waste was managed in the past, with unlined dump sites in just about every community and with very little opportunity to recycle.

"Now we have a great, modern waste management system. We have a lined landfill with leachate controls," said Evans.

"We have environmental monitoring that goes on there every month to make sure that the integrity of our waters, and our soils, and our air is protected."

Evans said thewaste management authority's websiteincludes figures on how much of eachrecyclable product is shipped out of the Norris Arm facility.

But Wood said he is concerned about the consequences if people thinkthe items theypainstakingly sort, wash, and put out to the curb aren't actually being recycled.

"I think that a lot of people are not quite sure," said Wood.

"I think people [have] a tendency to probably just throw it all in the landfill."

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