Canada

Disposal

In 2002, Canadian households generated over 12 million tons of municipal waste, of which only 2.5 million tons was diverted to either recycling, reuse, or composting. The remaining 9.5 million tons were disposed of mainly in landfills, and part was incinerated. According to the statistics for 2000, about 95 percent of the waste was disposed of at landfill sites, and the remaining 5 percent was incinerated. About 83 percent of the waste disposal facilities are publicly run, but they dispose of only 56 percent of waste, while the 17 percent of facilities that are privately run dispose of about 44 percent of the waste. Since landfills are the most commonly used method of disposal, they exist in every province and territory of Canada. The new landfill sites are sanitary, properly engineered landfills, but there are still a few landfill sites that are old and have issues with leachate and greenhouse gas emissions.

Most of the waste in Canada is landfilled, and municipalities are having trouble finding space for landfills, mainly because people do not want landfills in their neighborhoods. For example, in the 1990s, when Toronto's Keele Valley landfill reached near capacity, the municipality explored the possibility of shipping its waste 590 km north, by rail, to Kirkland Lake, Ontario. The 9,000 residents of Kirkland Lake protested the idea of having Toronto's municipal waste dumped into an abandoned mine in their community. In the end, the community won, and the decision to use the mine was overturned by the Toronto City Council. Instead of working on better solutions or waste management planning in Toronto, the decision was made to export the waste from Toronto to a landfill site in Michigan. Toronto paid $55 per ton for shipping its trash to Michigan ($35 for trucking and $20 for landfilling). There are additional environmental impacts associated with transporting the waste. Toronto is working on reducing the municipal household waste going to landfill sites; yet, instead of developing a landfill near the waste-generation source, it has begun trucking waste to London, Ontario, and its surroundings.

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