In British Columbia, municipal districts have established solid waste management plans to meet diversion targets. The Greenest City 2020 Action Plan is a strategy that addresses Vancouver’s environmental challenges in hopes of becoming a more sustainable city and aligns with Metro Vancouver’s regional waste plan (Integrated Solid Waste and Resource Management Plan). Similar to VSB’s plan, one of the Greenest City Plan’s goal areas is zero waste, specifically to “reduce solid waste going to the landfill[s] or incinerator[s] by 50% from 2008 levels.” As shown through the graph in Figure 3, there has been a 23% decrease in solid waste sent to landfills and incinerators since 2008.
The City of Vancouver is the most populous city in the province of British Columbia, located in Canada. One of the city’s goals is to become the most sustainable city in the world - a global leader in addressing the issue of climate change - and there has already been much progress made. For example, the use of sustainable resources creates new green jobs and helps develop local renewable energy projects.
Waste management is important from social, economic and environmental perspectives. It helps reduce the use of raw materials and energy, and is a great way of controlling air, water and land pollution. Vancouver citizens sort out
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Overflowing trashcans are also common in high-traffic pedestrian areas. In 1988, only 18% of Metro Vancouver’s garbage was recycled. Fortunately, this percentage has now increased to over 58%. Nevertheless, there are still many problems, for example, limited space to dispose our garbage. High amounts of organic matter in the trash that go to landfills harm the environment, because decomposing such material releases methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more harmful than carbon dioxide , accelerating the rate of global
In conclusion to this investigation one thing is clear and that is that recycling reeks benefits to the environment, Recycling material when compared to making material from raw material is a more efficient energy saving and more environmentally friendly way to reuse material that is usually consider as trash such as empty glass, and plastic bottles, or old newspapers. Recycling helps reduce the possible carbon emissions greatly and does reduce the human carbon footprint. But Recycling doesn’t resolve the pollution that is around the world today. Leading to new questions, questions like what about the landfills are they sustainable, and if so for how long. How long until the air becomes unbreathable? How long until Earth becomes its own furnace?
A very important issue tied to Canada’s future sustainability is that of recycling. There is currently a shortage of suitable landfill spaces in Canada, and the current landfills produce harmful emissions (Statistics Canada, 2008). Using methods to divert as many of these wastes away from landfills will help to slow their growth and improve Canada’s future outlook. Recycling is one such method.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of Vancouver. Vancouver is a beautiful coastal seaport city on the main land of British Columbia, Canada. It has great diversity due to international immigration, efficient city planning, and advanced technology companies that recruit global talents. However, the high cost of living, threats of earthquake, and containment of urban sprawls continue to be major concerns for the general public—these factors prevent the city from becoming the most desirable city to live in.
Often listed on top of the world's best cities to live in, Vancouver is a young, modern and multicultural city located in Canada`s west coast. With its leading-edge way of thinking, Vancouver quickly emerged as the third largest city in Canada. Considered one of the most beautiful and charming cities in Canada, the city is surrounded by sea, forests, rivers and mountains and at the same time has bustling urban areas. Life in Vancouver is full of unforgettable events and spectacular discoveries. Walking through the streets, you can see Indians, Vietnamese, French, Germans, Iranians, Greeks, Argentines and, of course, Brazilians. As the city is open to influences, the visitor or student quickly feels at home. The surrounding nature, temperate climate, and its outdoor activities all contribute for the abundant quality of life found in Vancouver.
As of January 1, 2003, the Canadian city of Toronto, Ontario started to ship one hundred percent of its garbage into the landfills of Michigan. In 2003, Toronto exported garbage at a rate of 7.2 tons per minute. Garbage trucks from Toronto run seven days a week twenty-four hours a day, so at the rate of 7.2 tons per minute it works out to be that Michigan imports 10,368 tons of Toronto's garbage per day. But it wasn't always like this, Governor John Engler and his administration turned garbage into a growth industry. The state lowered the liability standards for landfill owners and also provided tax-free financing for new facilities. The result of these changes lead to too many landfills and not enough garbage to fill them. So the landfill owners lowered their prices and searched even harder for garbage. Today, Michigan's private landfills charge ten to fifteen dollars per ton to dump while other landfill owners in neighboring states charge twenty five to fifty dollars per ton. Toronto did the math and realized that it is cheaper to haul its garbage 300 miles and dump it in Michigan then it is to dump it close to home. And on top of that, Michigan has eliminated funds fo...
Although littering may not always be intentional, sixty percent of pedestrians and forty percent of motorist deliberately do it (“NCDPS”). Because of all the littering being done, there is an island of trash two times the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean (Cruice-Barnett). This enormous amount of trash damages our environment more and more each day. When looking at it from that perspective, it is much easier to understand exactly how large of a problem littering actually is.
An eco-city has a healthy environment, with a high quality of life and a growing economy (City of Melbourne, 2012). The City Gold Coast will significantly reduce its ecological and carbon footprint, while contributing to the fight against global warming. "Eco-planning provides specific benefits for long-term sustainability by ameliorating the environmental impacts of cities in terms of the following objectives; improvement of air, water and soil quality, energy saving, reduction of stormwater runoff and urban heat island effect, aesthetic improvement of the city and enrichment of urban biodiversity" (Dizdaroglu et. al, 2009,
This Memo is an information report regarding the Green Bin Program curbside collection, one of Canada’s solutions to the food waste problem in landfills. Since 1998 it’s been making its way across Canada. This year Brandon has adopted the program and Winnipeg may be next. I thought it would be informative for us to know the food waste problem in Canada, what this program is, and the progress it has made so far.
In a world where over half of the human population calls a city their home, the need to restructure and revolutionize the way we design our urban environments has never been greater. Currently, the notion that these vast metropolises of metal, concrete, and sludge could one day be fully realized pillars of sustainability is certainly laughable. However, when these same cities are constantly growing and multiplying across the globe, all the while using a greater and greater chunk of our planet’s energy, this impossible task becomes a necessary focus. To strive towards the closed, continuous loop of “true” sustainability could greatly alter the image of the modern city. Any improvement over the current state of urban affairs could carry weight, and even if that goal is not entirely fulfilled, the gained benefits would be immense.
In the 1870’s, plastic was discovered in the United States when John Wesley Hyatt was trying to create a different material to make billiard balls (Manrich, 3). Little did he know it would majorly evolve into material we use everyday. However, plastics are now taking over our landfills. The average American throws away one-hundred and eighty-five pounds of plastic a year (Popescu, 121). The answer to decrease this statistic is easy: recycling. I believe that recycling will help eliminate littering and the growth of landfills, while also creating jobs for the unemployed. Not only does recycling plastic help eliminate littering, but also reuses the plastic so there is not a production of additional unneeded plastics. The
Policy is needed to regulate which course of action should be taken and how it should be implemented. Because of this, many plans and policies revolving around the management of solid waste have been put in place. Sometimes however, a particular policy can have its shortfalls, potentially resulting in its negative aspects outweighing the positive ones. According to the Conference Board of Canada Report, “Canadians dispose of more municipal solid waste per capita than any other country” (2013). Solid waste management in particular, involves many aspects, ranging from packaging waste, food waste, etc. (White & Franke 1999), hence, the following analysis revolves around household and commercial waste – referred to as Municipal Solid Waste (White & Franke. 1999) – in the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Municipal waste is a major health and environmental concern as it contributes to numerous problems like habitat destruction, surface groundwater pollution, and other forms of air, soil, and water contamination. Waste disposal methods like incineration create toxic substances, and landfills emit methane, which contributes to global warming. According to the Zero Waste Objective Report, “The impact of climate change and the increasing awareness of the role of “waste” and “wasting” in the production of greenhouse gas emissions is a constant environmental pressure… (2009). This leads to an increasing limitation of government to prevent and control the volume and toxicity of products in the waste stream and a growing need to shift responsibility to the product manufacturer.
As humanity develops new technology, the magnitude and severity of waste increases. When computers were developed, it widely was believed that the need for paper would be eliminated. On the contrary this was widely proven false and we are now utilizing more paper than ever. Canada is not an exception as the typical Canadian generates an average of three pounds of solid waste each day1. This alone shows what a careless species we have become- using and disposing materials without even considering the damage we are causing. With half a trillion tones of waste around the world, only 25% may be reused for a second or third time and less than 5% can be renewed limitlessly1. These facts are true only in developed countries. Since these traditional waste reduction methods have been proven inefficient, we must endorse new innovative technology to arrive at a solution.
The United States produces “about 8.25 billion tons of solid wastes each year” (Russell 1). People do not realize the impact they have on our planet and environment. When people throw anything in the trashcan, they are contributing to the destruction of our planet. The number landfills in the United States are decreasing, but the amount and volume of waste being thrown into the new landfills is increasing (Russell 4). Because of this escalating amount of garbage, Methane which contributes to global warming is an outcome of these landfills (Russell 7). As a result, our planet is suffering because of this epidemic. The garbage being put in the landfills could be recycled, but not enough businesses, ...
Recycling is important in the effort to preserve our environment for future generations. We are running out of locations to put landfills. Recycling is a simple and effective way to reduce the amount of waste stored in landfills, yet many people do not know how easy it can be. For example, whenever I go to Shoprite® and I b...
The average resident produces seven and a half pounds of garbage every day that is buried down in landfills and litter lands, costing a great amount of money. Nowadays, people face no more critical problem than the need to save the weakening environment, mainly in urban areas, where solid wastes are uselessly dumped. It has been observed that cities have no controlled structure for garbage disposal. Each year, millions of dollars are spent picking up litter and more is thrown away in valuable materials that could be recycled. As humanity develops new technology and equipment, the level of waste increases every day.