You have probably heard the term “waste diversion,” but do you know what this actually means? More importantly, why does waste diversion matter? Keep reading to find out.
In simplest terms, a waste diversion rate is how much waste is diverted from landfill in a given place and time – usually one year. This number is typically expressed as a percent, as in the percent of total incoming waste that is diverted from landfill each year. Instead of ending up in a landfill, diverted materials can be repurposed through recycling or composting.
A waste reduction goal is a waste diversion rate that a city, organization or group hopes to achieve by a certain time. For example, Ontario’s provincial goal is to achieve a 40 percent diversion rate by 2025, and then 60 percent by 2035. In other words, 40 percent of all waste generated in Ontario would be diverted from landfill by 2025.
Here’s the real question: why do these numbers matter? Why should we want to divert waste? It comes down to environmental destruction and climate change. Yes, that one plastic water bottle drifting down the street contributes to climate change. No, I’m not being dramatic. One bottle contributes to a ripple effect. One bottle leads to two, two leads to four and so on until the earth is polluted with litter. This litter wreaks havoc on our oceans, forests and the organisms inhabiting them.
How do these items get from landfill into our environment? When they sit in outdoor landfills they can be mobilized by rain, wind, or snow, drifting into rivers, down hills, onto beaches, for hundreds of kilometres. For instance, a plastic bottle that drifts into the Pacific Ocean from China can travel hundreds of miles, all the way to the coast of the United States, as shown in the graphic below. It’s pretty crazy to think how one piece of litter can travel across the world.
Why care about waste?
So our waste travels. Why does this matter? What can this waste do to wildlife, and how does it contribute to climate change?
Let’s look at plastic waste. Marine life often consume tiny plastics that drift into water, causing them to choke, have their insides torn up, or be poisoned. A study on sea turtles caught in fisheries around the Great Pacific Garbage Patch found that up to 74 percent of their diets were composed of plastics found in the ocean. Even worse, 84 percent of these plastics had at least one Persistent Bio-accumulative Toxic chemicals (PBT) in them, which build up inside the organism and slowly kills them. PBT can also transfer from the fish to a bird that eats the fish, now building up inside the bird, until the bird is eaten by another organism. This also means that as we eat the poisoned fish, we are also slowly poisoning ourselves.
Here’s the thing: it’s not just plastics that are problematic. All waste is problematic. Food waste, electronic waste, cigarettes – all waste impacts the environment negatively, emits greenhouse gases and depletes our ozone. To stop this, we must reduce our waste going to landfill.
Challenges with waste reduction
The Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA), formerly Waste Diversion Ontario, releases an annual public report on waste diversion rates of municipalities across Ontario. These reports show decreasing diversion rates across Ontario. Why? A University of Guelph study sums it up: 51.2 percent of respondents said that the distance to recycling receptacles was the greatest obstacle to sorting their waste properly; 19.7 percent said that inadequate knowledge of proper sorting was the second greatest. In other words, accessibility and knowledge are two of the greatest obstacles to waste diversion.
Accessibility
No municipality has a perfect waste collection system. Toronto had a diversion rate of 51.6 percent in 2017, but this is only an average: 65 percent of residential waste from houses was diverted while 27 percent of waste was diverted from high-rises and other multi-residential units like townhouses or condominiums.
Why do these numbers differ so greatly? Not everyone has access to the same waste collection services, even within one city. A house may have weekly garbage, recycling and organics collection, but the apartment across the street may only have garbage collection. Commercial buildings, hotels, restaurants and schools face this challenge, too: one of my largest lecture halls only has one garbage can, no recycling or compost. These garbage bins are filled with plastic food containers (recyclable), water bottles (recyclable) and leftover food (compost). What materials could have been diverted with correct sorting are instead going to landfill.
One 2014 study from the University of Guelph examined waste sorting services in one of their largest residences. They found that the materials in the garbage bins were 46 percent recycling, 30 percent organic and only 18 percent garbage. That means that 82 percent of the waste going to landfill could have been diverted if recycling or compost bins were available!
Another study at South Residence found that of 170 waste receptacles in the residence, 71 percent are garbage and 29 percent are recycling. There are no organic bins in this residence. All the recycling bins in this study were found only on the main floor of this six-floor residence. If a student wanted to recycle they would have to venture from their rooms to the main floor; it would be easier just to toss everything into the garbage bin on their floor.
Knowledge
Even when compost and recycling bins are available, it doesn’t mean they are used properly. People just don’t know how to sort sometimes, and that can be for a multitude of reasons.
The South Residence study also surveyed students on waste sorting behaviours. When unsure of where an item belongs, 60.9% of respondents tossed them into the garbage. As for the rest, 8.6 percent will take the time to research where the item belongs; 0.8 percent will check sorting signage, if there’s any.
Developing sorting skills may be tricky because of inconsistent rules between cities. My university town recycles paper coffee cups, but my hometown throws them into the garbage. When you live in a university town that brings 30,000 students into the city every year, or any major city that immigrants settle in, many of which live out of town, there will be confusion. If you don’t check where items belong in whatever city you are visiting, you might do what is “right” at home, but what is “wrong” in the new city!
What can we do to improve our waste diversion?
Waste diversion is complex. Municipalities across the province and country are taking action to reduce their waste, but will it be enough? Waste management master plans, waste sorting apps, social media posts, educational campaigns, promotional material, waste audits, presentations…the list of efforts go on and on, but it is not a simple issue that we can solve at the snap of our fingers.
What is the best thing each and every one of us can do to help avoid these serious problems? Reduce our waste. As mentioned, municipalities keep track of their waste diversion rates for a good reason. They use these numbers to monitor their current waste reduction efforts, see who is creating the most waste, and use that data to understand why that group may be creating so much waste. If they know the who, what, where, how and why, the problem-solving process becomes so much easier.
As unfortunate as it is, some people think sorting is inconvenient. In the 2010 South Residence survey, 18.9 percent of respondents said the biggest obstacle to proper waste sorting was the “perceived effort” doing so takes. No matter how much educational content we put out, there will always be someone throwing a water bottle into the garbage closest to them. In today’s fast-paced, consumption-driven society, we do what is most convenient for us, without taking a moment to consider our actions and be open to change. Making a small change is easy. Learning to sort may seem challenging, but it will become easier the more you do it. It’s like learning to ride a bike, or learning a new skill, or practicing a math equation: at first it’s scary and hard, but the more you do it, the easier it is. The more you try to sort, the more you learn, the easier it will become.
Landfills are not infinite. They run out of space, they close down, and more land is clear-cut to create new landfills. Closed landfills that aren’t managed carefully can leak toxins into the surrounding environment, clogging our waterways, poisoning our wildlife and releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The more waste we divert, the more we can prolong the lifespan of our landfills and the healthier our environment will be. With less waste going to landfill every year, we can start focusing on remediation and recovery of areas damaged by our waste. As long as we generate this waste, any attempts to recover land or water is redundant because it will only be damaged again.
I encourage you to assess your own sorting skills. How often are you mindlessly throwing things into the garbage? Do you really know where all of your waste belongs? I am not a perfect sorter, and I don’t think anyone is. The important thing is to try your best and to take the few extra seconds to sort correctly. I promise you that it’s not as hard or inconvenient as it seems; the more you do it, the easier it becomes.
This is our world, and our future rests in our hands. The actions we take now impact us and future generations. The more we waste, the more we put our future generations’ lives at risk. Reduce your waste, improve your sorting knowledge, demand better waste collection from your city. Small actions like these will help us build a sustainable future. Every step counts, no matter how small.