Islanders rally for fire victim

Grand Manan will soon have a groundbreaking new piece of technology to manage waste and save the village money. The Organics Diversion Program has passed the planning and environmental assessment stages, and by later this year village officials are hoping the amount of garbage being trucked off the island will be significantly reduced. This will be achieved with the installation of a self‑contained organic digester, which converts food waste to water.
The project has been in the works for a couple of years. Councillor Jayne Turner, who is on the village's solid waste committee, explains that the biggest challenge for waste management on Grand Manan is the cost of trucking garbage away and finding a buyer for recyclables. A load of garbage is taken about once a week to the Hemlock Knoll landfill in Lawrence Station, about 30 kilometers north of St. Stephen. The village pays a tipping fee based on weight C currently $60 per tonne C and organic material makes up about 32% of that.
St. George engineering firm Silk Stevens Ltd. conducted a study on current operating procedures at the transfer station in search of recycling options and cost reductions. Recommendations include new equipment, such as floor scales, transfer trailers and compacting bins to optimize the weight of each load, and cardboard, paper and plastic recycling programs. One of the first ideas implemented will be the diversion of organic waste, which Silk Stevens estimates at 426 tonnes per year.
Between tipping fees and ferry and trucking costs, an average trip to the landfill costs about $2,300. Turner says eliminating organic waste "will reduce the number of trips, and this is a very big expense." She hopes for as little as 20% community participation, acknowledging that it may be hard to get people to change old habits. However, with future recycling programs for packaging, which will be paid for by product manufacturers, more items will be recyclable, and garbage will have to be separated then.
The digester under consideration is an EnviroPure EPW "wet" food decomposition system. The company, headquartered in South Carolina and Ontario, is a world leader in alternative food‑waste disposal technology. According to EnviroPure, rotting food in landfills accounts for 20% of methane emissions -- a more damaging greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Add to this the emissions from trucks used to haul it and a $1.2 billion -- in U.S. dollars -- cost per year to transport food waste in North America. Beyond the standard backyard‑composter vegetable fodder, EnviroPure's "wet" system can also reduce meat, fats, oils, fish, poultry, bones and dairy products to wastewater, which is safe for sewers and septic systems, typically within 24 to 48 hours. Organic material is ground up, then fed into a tank where it is submerged in a carefully controlled environment with the right combination of oxygen, temperature and pH. The secret ingredient is a proprietary medium that provides micronutrients to the bacteria already present in the food, enabling rapid conversion to carbon dioxide, water and "microscopic organic material." The odorless wastewater can be discharged to municipal sewers C or in Grand Manan's case, a septic system.
EnviroPure's digesters can handle between 120 and 2,000 pounds of waste per day and range from four to 10 feet on a side. The Grand Manan model will accept up to 1,500 pounds per day. They are marketed for commercial and industrial kitchens and are used by hotels, hospitals, educational institutions, sporting venues and cruise ships, among others. They are not commonly found at waste disposal facilities, which usually have other means of handling organic waste, and Turner says they are too small for large municipalities, while small communities often wouldn't have the funds. In fact, the Grand Manan unit will be the first in Atlantic Canada. The project is financed by a grant from the Gas Tax Fund, federal money that supports municipal projects with environmental benefits.
Village Chief Administrative Officer Rob MacPherson estimates the digester will cost between $60,000 and $70,000. With 20% participation by residents, savings for the village could be $10,000 to $15,000 per year. He says approximately 30‑40% of cardboard is currently recycled, which indicates people's willingness to participate in such programs. He thinks that making people aware of the benefits will encourage participation. "It keeps stuff out of the garbage stream... and carbon dioxide is a major issue. Once it's on site, people can see it" and learn about how much can be put in it. More information will be mailed out as the project progresses.
The environmental impact study was completed at the end of December and is awaiting final approval from the Department of Environment and Local Government. MacPherson expects a tender for purchase and installation of the digester to be issued sometime in February. It is hoped a new 16'x24' building and septic field will be completed in the spring, with the digester up and running by summer.
Although it wasn't originally part of the plan, MacPherson says potential future benefits may include reducing fishing industry waste, such as lobster shells. They are investigating the possibility. "The potential is there," he says. He adds that there are a couple of other Maritime communities watching the project, whose representatives occasionally call to see how things are progressing.
"This is a first for Grand Manan," he says. "We're a leader in a whole bunch of ways. It's a bottom‑line savings for the community. We're quite excited."
For more information on the program, visit <www.silkstevens.ca> or contact MacPherson at 662‑7059.