6 months at the landfill

Today is my last full-day of work at the Edmonton Waste Management Centre, where I have been working as a Project Engineer on a temporary basis since this March. To be honest, it’s been difficult to explain to friends and acquaintances what it is that I actually do at the landfill. “Are you a garbage sorter? A litter picker-upper?” These frequent cheeky comments makes me want to literally whack them over the head with a piece of refuse, like maybe a greasy pizza box or perhaps a broken lamp shade, oh…wait…I think I just spotted an old pillow. By and large, the general public does not have a clue what happens to their garbage once it gets picked up from the curb and they really do not care to think about it.

There are two landfills, one private and one public, that serves the greater Edmonton area and both are running out of space. Even with the MRF, the recycling plant that sorts and processes recyclables from the blue bag program and the gargantuan indoor composter that turns residential waste and biosolids into useful, pathogen-free compost, the City still has to landfill over 400,000 tonnes of waste annually. Picture mountains of take-out containers, cheap, low-quality clothing, shoes and appliances that are made to break in a year, couches and mattresses, health care waste, etc. that can’t be recycled nor composted and needs to be buried in a giant man-made pit. The landfill is the final resting place for so much “stuff” that might have once been sought after, dearly cherished by its owners but now is rejected, and forsaken. Other waste coming from our ICI clients like home renovators, restaurants, 1-800-Got-Junk types of companies, and schools also goes straight to the mass burial grounds because they are currently not a part of the recycling or composting program.

One of the City’s innovative solutions for our garbage problem is a waste-to-biofuel facility, slated for 2011, that will gasify non-compostable organics and non-recyclable plastics into a synthetic gas which can then be converted into methanol and ethanol. The biofuels facility combined with the MRF and composter, will help Edmonton to achieve the target of 90% diversion of residential waste from landfills. Edmontonians should feel some sense of civic pride, as I am certain that no other Canadian and perhaps American city is close to reaching that target.

As for my role here, it’s just a typical project management kind of job, good work but underrated. Nothing that would make you leap up and yell, “THAT’S AWESOME! I’ve always dreamed of doing THAT!!!” Alternatively, think of me as a little cog in the magnificent machine that is waste management, whose sole purpose is to take away reminders of our wasteful, fickle and materialistic lifestyle as fast as possible and make us forget we ever bought what we threw out.


Glossary and Abbreviations

Biosolids – residuals from the wastewater treatment process, a combination of partially decomposed organic matter, pathogens and other grotties.

ICI – Industrial, Commercial, Institutional

MRF – Materials Recovery Facility

For more information on the Edmonton Waste Management Centre:

http://www.edmonton.ca/Environment/WasteManagement/EWMC/ewmc_%20for_%20web.pdf