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2009 News and Information
New Tool to Help Metro Vancouver Citizens Go Green
25 March 2009Metro Vancouver unveiled a new tool today that will help people reuse and recycle more things. An on-line data base on the region’s website tells residents and businesses where they can take unwanted materials and products instead of turning things into “garbage.”
The new data base – called Metro Vancouver Recycles – is one of the initiatives the region is implementing as part of its Zero Waste Challenge to reduce waste.
Each year, about 500,000 tonnes of the solid waste generated in Metro Vancouver is buried in the Cache Creek Landfill, but that landfill is scheduled to close in 2010. Metro Vancouver’s Board of Directors decided last year to abandon plans to seek another Interior landfill, to seek provincial approval for waste exports to a U.S. landfill as an interim solution, to focus on Zero Waste Challenge initiatives to reduce waste, and to seek long-term solid waste management solutions in the Metro Vancouver region.
Next month, Metro Vancouver begins a public consultation process about these interconnected issues.
For more information about the Zero Waste Challenge meetings, Sustainability Dialogues and Community Breakfasts, please go to the “public consultation” and “outreach” sections on the main page of the region’s website, www.metrovancouver.org.
“We have to make some hard decisions this year,” said Marvin Hunt, a Metro Vancouver Director and Chair of the region’s Waste Management Committee. “Now is the time for the public to have its say.”
In the meantime, residents and businesses can use Metro Vancouver Recycles to make their own ecological footprint a little lighter. Look for a link on the “what’s new” section of the main page of the region’s website.
The data base uses on-line maps to reveal the closest drop-off destinations, providing people with even more options than offered by municipal blue box collection programs.
“The question we’re constantly getting from citizens is: Where do I take it?” Hunt said. “This is a tool so we can tell them, in their own house, 24/7, where to take that item so they can plan their recycling trips. It’s a fabulous tool that helps people do what they actually want to do.”
Hunt and others at a media event gave Metro Vancouver Recycles a test drive today in a building beside the Surrey Transfer Station.
“The only way we’ll get to zero is by having our citizens help us - personally taking responsibility for their garbage and find places where they can reuse, recycle and dispose of those items,” Hunt said.
