Latest / Civically Speaking Podcast with Host, Lenore Swystun and Co-Host, Christina Cherneskey / Civically Speaking March 19 2019 - Sheri Praski - State of Solid Waste in Saskatoon and beyond

Transcript

Civically Speaking March 19 2019 - Sheri Praski - State of Solid Waste in Saskatoon and beyond · Civically Speaking Podcast with Host, Lenore Swystun and Co-Host, Christina Cherneskey

• 1:20
  LenoreSpeaker 1: Well and just like that here we are on a beautiful almost spring formally upon us here on community radio CFCR, our 90.5 by dollar.
• 1:31
  LenoreSpeaker 1: You can get us online.
• 1:33
  LenoreSpeaker 1: This is civically speaking and I am your host Lenore Swystun and I'm honored to have in the studio today, Sherri Preski, an engineer, an environmental engineer and education specialist is there.
• 1:45
  LenoreSpeaker 1: I've, I've see titled on Your Linkedin Page, which is awesome.
• 1:48
  LenoreSpeaker 1: So welcome to the show Sherri.
• 1:50
  LenoreSpeaker 1: Thank you, Lenore.
• 1:51
  LenoreSpeaker 1: Yeah, thanks so much for coming on.
• 1:53
  LenoreSpeaker 1: I know it's been a while since we've touched base kind of on where things are at with the state of kind of our environment in particular to kind of your specialization.
• 2:02
  LenoreSpeaker 1: But you know what, folks may just not know quite who you are.
• 2:06
  LenoreSpeaker 1: So how about we start there with kind of giving a little bit of your background, Sherry?
• 2:11
  LenoreSpeaker 1: Um, around who you are, where you come from, and kind of do your area of specialization.
• 2:16
  Sheri Speaker 3: Okay.
• 2:16
  Sheri Speaker 3: I'm a civil engineer.
• 2:17
  Sheri Speaker 3: I went to the U of s here many, many years ago.
• 2:20
  Sheri Speaker 3: Grew up in small town Saskatchewan, a farm girl from way back.
• 2:24
  Sheri Speaker 3: And, uh, I've, I've worked with different engineering companies.
• 2:28
  Sheri Speaker 3: I've been a highways engineer.
• 2:29
  Sheri Speaker 3: I managed the environmental branch for the city of Saskatoon and I've been on my own now for almost nine, nine, yeah.
• 2:37
  Sheri Speaker 3: Nine years.
• 2:38
  Sheri Speaker 3: And uh, I work in environmental waste management, waste diversion, kind of my, my, uh, wheelhouse, which is a great wheelhouse to have because I think from a topical perspective, Oh, there in the world, I think there's, there's not a kid to now that's going through the school system that is in the oven education in terms of kind of waste waste management and their environment.
• 3:01
  Sheri Speaker 3: So I know when we kind of touch base before the show, it was like, oh, hey, what are we going to talk about?
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: What are some of the things that we want to touch base on?
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: And you know, for folks who tune in to civically speaking, it's about all kinds of civic issues.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: We've got political stuff that we talk about and, and right into organizations and what organizations are doing that.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: I know one of the questions, I kind of feel it to get us started out was just what is the state of kind of things in this kind of sounds funny but waste wise out there on the environment.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: Well, and that's a broad question.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: So my apologies for that.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: It is such a loaded question and there's so much to you to think about.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: So many opinions, so many reports, so much information dating back 10, 15, 20 years and uh, unfortunately so little action and is what we've seen.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: So it's hard to, um, there's, there's a lot of words, a lot of people wanting to do things better and we just haven't been getting there.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: Um, so where are we at?
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: Well, we, we, we've have a report, I think it was in 2017 saying all these different things that we need to do.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: Um, we haven't done them.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: We had a similar report back and I think it was 2007 all of the things that we needed to do, very similar to the 2017 um, we did get the curbside recycling in, you know, and that was, that was, uh, a decade long of issues and, and a lot of issues to get there.
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: And, and now we have it and I believe people love it and I think people are ready for the next thing.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: And, and when you talk about waste, it's kind of one of those things people can understand easiest.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: And back when I started at the city, one of the councillors actually sat me down and I was like, you know, recycling, like that's 1980s.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: Like everyone recycles that people know recycling and uh, let's just do it and move on.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: When his counselor actually said to me, um, you know what, that's what people see.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: That's what they need before they can take the next step.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: And, and she's right and that, that's where we're at in Saskatchewan.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: And we need to, we need to get through that.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: We need to take the step of dealing with our waste so that we can move on to even even bigger environmental issues.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: But what I see with waste is there, there's just so much of an environmental impact when you go up the value chain right from the um, the manufacturing of raw materials, right through the supply chain to, to the waste.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: Ultimately what we're throwing in the ground of the legacy that we're leaving for our future.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: And it's interesting because we jumped right to Saskatoon right in because we talked, I mean in Saskatoon has been interesting because for the longest time we've had the whole system of that, you either load up your garbage cans on the front of your house or on the back of your house, somebody comes along and takes that away.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: And then things happen then came in kind of a blue bin and things that you could put in that Blue Bin, which has changed over time.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: You know, whether it be kind of plastics and cardboard and glass and then now kind of a a reversion of that and to a revision of that I should say to to non glass because that's maybe not so good to have in there.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: We still have waste that we're throwing out that's going somewhere into a landfill and then we have this other bin that came along that you can pay for, which our family has and you can throw in your compostable stuff if you're not throwing it into your own garden or your lawns or whatever you have on that is is when we talk about kind of the, the facts on waste is there, where are we going with waste?
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: I mean you've answered that in part is that the city has gone to a curbside program in terms of, of pickup of all of these things, but what, what, what's the state of where the recycling world is in the municipal world at large?
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: Because I know you were so humble at the beginning of your introduction, but I mean you've got lots of hats that you wear in terms of waste management across North America.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she, that's been very interesting.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: Say I did me get elected to the international board of the solid waste association graduations.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: Pretty, yeah, it's been pretty cool, pretty eyeopening and a pretty scary as well.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: Just getting into, um, I actually just recently was in Boston working on a a zero waste, uh, of course that we're looking to bring to Canada and it was quite interesting just seeing the different definitions of zero waste as well and all the steps that you need to go through through the to get there.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: So I mean zero waste is so far off.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: We're at, I think the last report I saw was 22.8% or something like that in Saskatoon.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: But again, even back when I was, it was there, we had a limited life on our landfill and we did an optimization study.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: We have a lot more life on our landfill, but we still have a very limited resource there.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: So looking first at waste as why do we care as a city there is a financial reason to care.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: We have this resource, which is a landfill on the edge of our city to close that, cap it and build a new landfill.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: I think the city's estimates were between 26 and 100 million.
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: And I know we'd looked at sighting way back in the day, I will be even harder nowadays here, your, your landfills going to be farther and farther.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: So there's the 26 to$100 million to two site and get that new landfill.
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: But then you've got to look at the collection of the waste and now we have to haul that waste farther and those trucks take a lot of fuel and that is a huge part of the cost of our waste.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: So, so by protecting that landfill, I mean there is all the wonderful environmental benefits of doing that, but there is huge financial benefits to doing it.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: So there, there's, there's a lot of really good reasons for us to be looking at that.
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: So the state of waste in Saskatoon, I know recently had been interviewed, there was the, the waste utility and I have seen some numbers and percentages of there's, you know, so many people who are for it.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: So many people who are definitely against it.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: But it is one of the tools that a lot of communities have used and it's been in every report on, on the steps we need to take.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: And two of the big ones are get waste as a utility and get organic soap and waste as a utility.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: What it does is it has the advantage of helping people not think garbage is free.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: And there, I don't know if there still is, but back in the day I had to deal with a lot of people who are like, I like literal words or it is my God given, right?
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: I pay taxes and I get to throw my garbage away.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: Um, you know, that, that that's pretty old thinking.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: Waste is free.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: Um, it's not, it's, it's hugely expensive.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: And when you look at, like I said, that resource of the landfill numbers anywhere from 60 to$200 a ton is, is depending on all the different ways you can crunch the numbers, but that airspace costs a lot of money.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: So there's a cost to that.
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: And then of course, like we said, there's the cost of the, the garbage trucks, the pickup at your curb, the hauling it to a new place.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: And then there's that garbage sitting in that landfill.
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: And we're a very dry, arid climate and it means the waste breaks down slowly and that is a liability for at least a hundred years.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: So I mean, our kids and our grandkids are going to be dealing with that as well.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: So there's a lot of reasons to start thinking about why, how to do waste better.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: Waste utility is one that keeps coming up and many communities have gone to that.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: And um, you know, like I said, just taking it away and making it not appear to be free.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: Huge value to that.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: And I thank you for sharing that.
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: I want to come back to that, but I also want to go back to the whole net zero as well, because when you say that in the states are doing that and then you'd say, we want to bring that to Canada, of course that piqued my interest because I'm thinking there's a whole bunch of, you know, planning students and engineering students out there and, and professionals and just, you know, uh, what I call kind of, you know, the, uh, the coach potato types that love of this stuff too.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: So when you look at it from the geek aspect of this, what does that actually mean?
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: And who's doing it and who's doing it well?
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: Well, the answer is, um, very few people are doing it and nobody's doing it well.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: And there's a lot of semantics.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: And actually that was the reason I was taking the course in the states because in a lot of ways, Canada's, that is well advanced to the state's, landfills are big, huge business in the states.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: And I know people always say, oh, our landfill should be making money.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: And no, it doesn't make money unless we'd be charging$200 a ton, then we might make some money off of it.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: But no one's wanting to pay that.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: So in the states though, they do have huge economies of scale, huge land masses, huge mountains built of waste.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: And there, there is a waste is a bit cheaper there.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: And actually what I found interesting is, you know, even the instructor, I took the course from had a hoard time to understand the definition of zero waste.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: And the questions came up, it got into, oh well no, you can't do that.
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: And I'm sitting there going, absolutely, you can the, you know what, if you want to get to zero waste, the question is, we haven't done that.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: How can we do it?
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: So what does it mean?
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: So in a, in a nutshell, what is there a way?
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: Every you, you start with source reduction, you reduce what you're using and, and you start making smarter decisions.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: So, um, it's having consumers not by over packaged goods or not buy goods that are packaged and stuff that's not recyclable.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: Say Styrofoam or I should probably stay expanded polystyrene, right, the correct word.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: But, um, it's, it's, uh, getting consumers educated, having them make those decisions.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: And then once they do consume products, making sure that everything can be recycled at the end of life.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: Um, I believe it's Switzerland and there's a few other places that are now sponsoring places to help fix products rather than just throwing an awaking that online and you know, it's more expensive right now to fix that microwave or that TV than to throw it or hopefully recycle it and buy another one.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: And so fixing that bike, fixing the, you know, learning to, so learning to do different things and starting to reduce what we throw away as another piece of that pie.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: Um, after that, it's, uh, you know, what, what do you do with, with what's leftover?
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: And, and that's where there's huge variance because some people are thinking, well, if you do waste to energy, that's zero waste.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: Um, and there's, there's barriers to energy being given.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: An example of that for folks who might not understand what we mean.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: And what it is, is there's huge plants in the states.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: Where are they?
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: It's not burning, but it's a, it's a form of incineration where they capture all of the particulates that would be produced by it and they create, say electricity.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: Um, you can do a alternative natural gas.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: There's different things you can create.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: So it's basically, um, burning of the products to create energy.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: There's also the ability to do that with compost in an anaerobic digester.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: It's called the, you'll hear that on the street and, and it's, it's a way of composting it and capturing the energy and you have accomplished at the end you have an energy source.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: So, so like I said, there's, there's a lot of different views on whether that zero waste.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: Um, but ideally you never have to get to that point where you're incinerating are burning.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: And, and I mean, what it is, is it's everything you use is recyclable.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: Like, I believe it's full of old cars have been like that free for many decades.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: You can recycle every component in that car.
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: Well, we don't in Canada, but there are places that do.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: And so it's getting to a point where our products, where the, it's going to take the consumers and government of course to demand that the products that come in are recyclable.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: But that's ultimately where we would like to get and that it actually is being recycling bed.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: It's readily available.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: And then the final piece of that, which I, I, it's not the final, it's actually one of the initial ones, but a compost and taking our organics out of your waste, reusing them.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: I mean we are, we are soil abundance.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: We have wonderful soils in Saskatchewan.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: There's not a great market for them.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of places that, that that organic material has a high value.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: So maybe we're not optimum for that, but at least not putting it in into a landfill and turning it into something else has a high value.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: It's interesting that you say that.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: So now if you were to try to imagine that and for folks that are just tuning in, this is civically speaking.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: I have as a guest here, Sherri Praski, who is an environmental engineer and we're, we're having a chat here about kind of solid waste management and kind of, you know, looking at it both terms of what's going on around the world and then how can this relate to our experience here in Saskatoon.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: Let's take that, what you just shared around net zero waste, right?
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: And then you put it into the, into the thoughts of, well how could that translate to Saskatoon?
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: Well, big question.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: Initially I think it was in the 28, 2007, there was kind of a goal and aspiration of, of a zero waste.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: And, and that was again so far off when we're at 20%, um, in 2017 when they redid it, they set a goal of of 70% waste.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: So exact same exact same thing.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: We're so far from that then it's still just out there.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: What would it look like?
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: Well, there's a lot of steps in their plan and I can't recall what they all are.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: But like I said, one of them definitely is getting ways to a utility starting making it to make people aware of what they're throwing away, having the options available.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: So everyone does have a recycle bin.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: Educating them on how to use it.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Getting compost, starting to get compost out of every house, no longer throwing that in.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: So that's, it's a huge step.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: Then of course there's education on the consumerism, front buying recyclable goods with recyclable packaging, lower, no packaging, um, you know, getting to that, that point and then there's not needing the, the next new thing or is it better donation?
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: Is it better?
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: Um, reuse better, fixing better.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: Upcycling and there's so many other things that, that, um, well if you've ever went and sat and watched what goes into the landfill, it would make you cry.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: It's so hard to see, and I just have to look at the bins in our back alley sometimes including my own hypocritically said, yeah, you know, where you're making that decision about what do I do with this?
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: I don't think there's a place I can take this, you know, because we don't have outlets readily available.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: I think in some of the travels I've done through the world, you know, you almost look at developing countries, they do a much better job on a necessity on Ri Utilization of materials to be innovative and, and recycle, you know, using tires and making parts out of them that go into something else.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: Whereas here it's just like, what do you do with this?
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: And as you know, we do have a lot of, it's called stewardship, where you can take sore our beverage containers, right?
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: You can take it back.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: Having that financial incentive seems to, we have one of the highest recycling rates of, of beverage containers, I believe in North America.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: And you know, so there's that program and then tires.
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: Of course, we have it for a lot of things we needed for more and we need to demand more, right?
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: Like BC.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: Um, I think, believe it's anything with a cord.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: Why do we not have that in Saskatchewan?
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: It's, it's easy to do.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: There's many provinces that have hazardous waste, um, stewardship programs.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: We don't what happens with our hazardous waste, it's illegal to go in the landfill.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: You better not throw it down the drain and that's going to affect our rivers.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: Where can people take it?
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: And so we, you know, we just need to, as a community become more educated and more vocal and ultimately governments need to listen to those who are vocal.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: And easier said than done.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, I watched that debate, we talked about it on various panels on this show and some of the debate, and I mean now that it's spring, I think this will come to people's mind is they're starting to smell the compost in their green bins and in their gardens and the snowball.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: It's coming up and all this sort of stuff in the run off down the street.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: But you know, I'm going to jump around here a little bit, but I'm kind of looking for a comment.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: And here is like some people have said is like, well maybe you just do the tough love and you just make it a utility now and don't worry what people say and just let it go.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: Well that didn't quite happen here.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: You know, they kind of went there and then it was like, ah, kind of pulled back.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: Now study some more.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: In your experience when you've looked at programs will otherwise, is it, how critical is the education piece and how much of it is just go for it?
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: Who that that?
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: I know it's a tough question, right?
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: It is a loaded one because of what we dealt with in Saskatoon.
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: But I mean you were through some iterations of that.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: And to be fair, when I was a counselor at the beginning of this Millennium, oh my gosh, oh so long ago.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: We also had that discussion of utility of waste being a utility.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: It was there, and I remember the women counselors were saying, okay, we could do that.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: It means that we have had to tell people, it's got to be clear, there's gotta be an edge.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: And then you just do it.
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: And then you bake that compensation on the toxin so that people can see that you gained it here.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: You lose it there.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: And the reward system is do a good job.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: And so when you talk about education, that's why I say it's a loaded one.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: I wasn't involved in all the discussions, but I understand some people said there wasn't education.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: If you say there's education, there wasn't education, you weren't listening then.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: Like you said, it's been happening for 20 years.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: I might be old and jaded, but rip the bandaid off.
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: It's time to just move forward.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: Because if we want to debate everything for a decade, um, you know, we're in a while or two decades, in this case, we're not going to move forward.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: So it's right now we're at a point, it's like, do we want to move forward or do we want to stay in the same place and study it over and then do another public consultation and then do more education and then study it again.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: And that is a cycle we've been on and we're spending millions of dollars doing that when we could actually be putting that into action.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: Now I want to go to the whole, like the end part of this because while all of this debate is going on, things is still being hauled to the landfill.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: Things are still going in there.
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: That probably shouldn't go in there.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: But at the same time we're hearing the message out there politically or otherwise that are saying yet.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: But we got a lot more life now in that landfill cause we aren't doing enough to version your thought to that.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: We're not, I mean the diversion hasn't changed significantly.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: Um, and yes we have more life.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: So then now with a choice, do we want to throw it in?
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: I'll throw it in a hole and burry it and have those resources gone.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: We can do that.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: And, and that, that's the choice right now that I think council needs to make and whether they want to listen to the people and weigh what the percentages and if that's how they want to make the decision or if they want to make the decision on what's best for, for the future.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: Um, you know, they, they have that decision to make.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: They have all of the information, they have incredible staff who have done so much work.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: So many studies, so much labor, so much so, so many millions of dollars have gone into that, that education and that understanding and the how to do a component.
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: So right now I think it's at a critical point.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: Um, I guess when, when that decision changed, I was like, okay, I guess they're not serious.
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: And I don't see that for the council as a whole.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: But you know what?
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: The council as a whole is, is a council because the council and you know what?
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: They have chosen not to move forward on, on a, a key component.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: And I don't know what it's like then.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: This sounds very jaded, but, but then quit.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: Let's stop spending money on it.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: It's like if you make the decision, we're not going to move forward.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: Let's not move forward, stop pretending, stop studying, stop consulting, stop all of it and come back when you're ready to do it more.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: I want to ask those.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: If you do nothing and you just keep going on, what is, what's the outcome of that?
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: And then do you have any examples of where somebody left the situation so long that now it becomes critical?
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: What happens then?
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: What happens then is your, where they're going to eventually have to site a landfill somewhere, right?
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: And that is going to be a huge uproar.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: Or I mean the other option is there other, other landfills in the area and they can start paying those landfills to take our waste and then they can take it as long as they're able.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: And of course there's going to be a cost to that as well.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: So protecting our resource, I call that landfill a resource.
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: Um, there is a lot of value and from every study, everything that I've seen that is the best way forward.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: But there are other options, right?
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: Let's fill it up.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: Let's put everything in there.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: Let's leave this lovely legacy for the kids and, and build another landfill somewhere else.
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: Triple the cost of our collection and our waste and, and carry on.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: That's what we'll have to do.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: And that's what a lot of communities have done.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: Any you've heard stories that, I want to say it was in the eighties or nineties where they're, you know, hauling tronches waste to cross the border to[inaudible].
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's, there's options were, we're never going to be stuck.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: We're in Saskatchewan and actually it was presenting in a, uh, Florida years ago and my kids had this book on, uh, us.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: Um, and it was basically like, okay, we're from Saskatchewan land, mass of Texas, population of Hawaii.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: The world is our landfill.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: And that's what people tend to think, well, try and site a landfill.
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: It's, you know, that it's, it's not easy and I don't even know if it would be possible and I sure as heck wouldn't want to be involved in doing it.
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: So that's the path we're moving on and is at 20 years or 50 years, there's all different numbers and it depends on how much we invest.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: They need to invest a lot to get longer life out of it because we might have to make higher slopes, we have to get Nav Canada approvals, we have to, you know, build new cells.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: There's a whole bunch of stuff that has to happen to get that longer life and that investment's not happening.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: And then either is my understanding.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: So, so at some point we're full and yeah, once it's a crisis will then you're paying, you're paying crisis fees on it.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: So, so there's a benefit to doing it, but it's just we have to decide if we care about that benefit for today or if we want to push that off to another counselor, to our children or whatever.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: And then there's options and uh, the world isn't going to end because you know what, there's more places for us to dump our stuff, which is sad, but extremely sad.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: Give me some success stories.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: If somebody was, was tuning into the show and they're saying, okay, I want to look at some examples of waste management, that might be a good place to go and look because I'm doing a report or I'm just curious as heck and I want to phone my counselor up and say, Hey, this is what I think might be a good idea.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: Where would you go?
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: Where would you point them?
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: There is good pockets in a lot of places.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: I actually quite like co Vancouver's doing it.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: I'm going to guess that's been more out of necessity than out of uh, again, you know you have population Toronto is, is making strides.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: San Francisco's incredible.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: How are and how, how are they incredible there?
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: They actually have a zero waste goal.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: They have a, a group that's working towards it.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: Actually at the last conference I had hosted, I had a speaker from there who from their zero waste team and basically his, his focus was getting in and helping educate multifamily buildings.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: Like they're, they've, they've done everything they can, they, they're diverting most of it out of there a single families.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: So now what's getting in and actually helping?
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: Well, like so they actually have people who are going out and helping people recycle and do things better.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: And they have the fix it shop and they have the, you know, they just have that, that understanding that education.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: They have the plastic bag ban, which again, that's a very small portion of it, but it's just, it's all statements.
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: It's all saying we care and we want to move towards this.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: They have like Zero Way San Francisco a whole, you know, a group doing that.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: So, so yeah, there, there's places, I mean you, you don't even have to look that far.
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: You go to react and humbled and they, they have a tag, a bag system they've been paying for what they throw for for years.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: Is there system perfect.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: No, there's a lot that they can do.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: Um, but you know, there, there's a lot of communities that are, are working towards reducing their waste.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: Why are they doing it?
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: It actually saves money, right?
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: A humble just had to site a new landfill.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: So they have huge costs of, of, of doing that.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: And now they understand the value of that resource.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: And that's part of the reason what drove them took towards a tag, a bag or I'm not even sure if that they can, that happened many years ago.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: So I think it might've been some progressive people thinking, Hey, you know what?
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: I don't want to, I actually don't want to pay for your waist if you want to throw everything in your garbage.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: And I don't want to throw much in it.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: I don't really think that's fair that I should have to pay for years.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: We all pay that through our tax system.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: And that's what the brilliance of, of the, uh, waste as a utility model is.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: It actually let people make choices.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: Um, I don't have to pay for everyone on my street who is putting their container out every week or two weeks or whatever it is, uh, with the lid up.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: And if I'm going to reduce my consumption, I'm going to try and recycle stuff.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: I'm going to new, uh, you know, divert organics.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: Why do I have to pay for, you know, for other people's bad practices.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: So it, it does give you a level of control.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: Um, so there is that simplicity in it, so it's got the good environmental benefits, but it also has that, you know, what, take it out of our taxes.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: Like you said, let me see a tax break on it and put it in a utility and give me some power.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: And I think that's been one of the big issues that I know even on this show and I've had different guests on and that has been around that clarity and that certainty that folks want to know is if we're going to invest in this, I want to know there's a return here because if we're going to be doing this, because we have been so used to it being as part of our tax situation, I'm using quotes in the air right now.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: It's, it's a matter of getting people to move to that without thinking that they're still paying back there as well.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: You know, so I think that that's part of it.
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: I want to flip to the energy side though, because I know you also play on that side too.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: And that that's, that's a part too that I want to have you back on.
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: But let's give a little primer here today in terms of, you know, we're talking about waste and solid waste management, but you're also in the field where you're watching on the other side of creating energy effectiveness.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: I like to call it as opposed to efficiency.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: He goes, I think to be effective might mean doing things a little bit differently, not just doing something that might be getting more efficient, but not necessarily getting you to the end result.
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: What are you seeing on that end?
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: Um, you know, I haven't been that tide cynically on that front.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: Um, I am seeing communities doing sustainability plans.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: I recently was waiting on one on medicine had, um, I had a wonderful summer last summer in the mountains working with a tourism company that was looking at him to reduce their energy load.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: And what was incredible is, is the cost savings.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: And I mean, I care about the environment.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: For me it's, it's about my children and their future, but the, the, the, there's so much low hanging fruit in this city.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: Uh, we could be saving so much money and just happily moving in an environmental direction without feeling any pangs whatsoever.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: And would be some examples that come top of mind for you, Sherry.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: A top of mind light bulbs, right?
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: There's still people with incandescent light bulbs and time.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: I'm changing the mode places just because it's just, it makes me want to cry that were just like burning energy and, and there's, there's LEDs, there's, there's better technology with better light that lasts longer.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: You have to change them less and they save you money.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: And it's like, I just can't believe it when I walk into a place when they, they, they, they have incandescent.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: And I think the, I think the federal budget today was giving a little bit more incentive on that.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: So I heard that there is an incentive on electric vehicles.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: And I was really excited about that too because there's been a lot of communities that have, that are a lot of, mostly a provinces and states that have had that.
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: And um, I mean, when you think of the pollution, yes, we have pollution in Saskatoon.
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: We have particulates in our air.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: Um, there, there's options for having electric vehicles, but we've never had an incentive in this province.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: Um, now it looks like federally there, there might be an incentive.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: And I'm really excited to see that because that's another huge one that that affects us daily.
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: And back in the city days, right there is, I'm anti idling campaigns.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: And when you get into the details of it, just, if there's any parents listening, I hadn't thought of it, but you have your people idling in front of schools and you have your kids at the height of tailpipes breathing this in.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: And this isn't maybe carcinogenic.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: This doesn't maybe cause cancer.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: It is carcinogenic.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: It is cancer causing particulates that were pumping out in front of our kids' schools all the time.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: Like there's just so many simple things that we can do, whether it's a more efficient vehicle, whether it's not idling, uh, whether it's not driving as much, you know, there's, there's just so many things that there's light bulbs.
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: There's, um, higher efficiency furnaces and appliances when you're buying.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: Some people say, oh, they cost more.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: Absolutely not.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: Um, if you can't do the math, ask someone to give me a call because they will save you money.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: Most of them within the, within the year, much less over a 10 year period that you should, you should have that appliance.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: Like there's just, there's so many easy ways to save money and the brilliant thing that's going to save the environment and hopefully someday Eric or kids will, will, well they're not going to thank us because we've made a mess, but at least it won't be as big of a burden.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you saw the, the kids striking last Friday, you know, it, it's, it's time.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: And I can say I disagree and what I saw at the heart of it was we're not listening to educated people, so why should we get an education?
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: And I mean it's a right, I'm in the last couple of minutes, you know, to reflect on this was that I still think there's a push back and I don't, you know, part of it is kind of maybe the orange haired guy to the south of the border in part.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: But you know, there is a message as you know, oh we're blowing it up too much.
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: It's still the Granola crunchy, you know, you know, tree huggers out there, you know, what are some, what are, what are some places that you can point people to in terms of an evidence base on this stuff?
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: And any final comments that you have to address that first when people talk about that, if it's, if it's the orange haired guy or if it's, um, bottom line is why is that, why is there any, um, why do people not want to grasp it?
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: It saves money.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: Take the environment out.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: Like when you look at a fossil fuel, it was made from fossils.
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: It made, it was, it's prehistoric.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: It's not something that we can recreate.
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: Why would we waste that resource?
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: So we're wasting a resource and we're spending more money doing it.
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: So take all the of your environmental dislikes or whatever you want to take out of it.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: Why do you not want to save money?
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: Why do you not want to do things better?
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: And who we just have to look at where our prejudices come from.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: Is it, I can't even answer that.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: It's just, it's, it's so hard to imagine why people just want to pay more money.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: No, and I mean, good point.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: Guess what?
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: We're at the end of the show if you can believe it.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: So thank you, Sheri Praski, for coming onCivically speaking.
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: I'm your host, Lenore Swystun up next.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: Does he assess you show, but one further thing, if somebody did want to get ahold of it, how can they get ahold of him?
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: I guess Linkedin is probably the biggest, sorry, I'm not on Facebook.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, that's good.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: So if anyone's needing to have any environmental kind of questions or thoughts, especially with relation to solid waste, I'm sure he prosecutes one of your Goto.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: So thanks again for coming on today's show.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: Next up is the USSU show.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: Um, enjoy the weather out there.
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: Take care everyone.
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: Thanks, Lenore.