Media Clipping – July 11, 2004, The Chronicle-Herald

Gleaning gold from garbage

By Silver Donald Cameron

FIRST WORDS

WHAT ISN’T counted, doesn’t count. We care about what we measure.

The American environmentalist Bill McKibbon suggests that people would use much less gas if a dashboard meter showed in real time the mileage the car was achieving. Put your foot down hard, and the mileage dives. Lift it, and the number soars. Simply measuring performance, says McKibbon, creates better performance.

By the same token, a research group in St. Margaret’s Bay, GPI Atlantic, has spent a decade measuring things that ought to be measured, but aren’t. When a woodlot is clear-cut, traditional economists measure the financial benefit of the resulting pulp and lumber.

But something is lost, too, and we don’t measure those losses: the ecological contribution of the trees to global cooling, the wildlife habitat they provide, their contribution to erosion control and even their beauty, which attracts tourists and new residents.

Maybe that clear-cut cost us more than we gained. But we have no way of knowing, because we’ve only paid attention to one side of the ledger.

GPI Atlantic - the "GPI" stands for "Genuine Progress Index" - has been working for seven years to create measurement tools for the other side of the ledger.

What is the economic value of volunteerism or unpaid household work? What are the true costs of AIDS, of crime, of obesity, of greenhouse gas emissions?

Last week, GPI Atlantic issued its newest report, on the economic costs and benefits of recycling and composting. In 1989, only three per cent of Nova Scotia’s solid waste was composted or recycled.

Today that figure is 46 per cent. Our province’s management of its garbage is the best in the world. Stand a little straighter, everyone.

Among the economic benefits of this achievement is a constant parade of observers coming to Nova Scotia to see how we do it. In effect, we’ve created a waste-management tourism industry which draws visitors from all over Canada as well as from Europe, Asia, South America and the Caribbean.

GPI meticulously notes the value of this mini-industry, and adds it in.

Still, our waste-management system is expensive, costing us about $24 million more every year than the old landfill system. Bad news, right? Wrong - because our new system actually generates that amount and more, saving us a minimum of $31 million a year. (The figure may be as high as $167 million.)

Creating a cleaner environment turns out to be both ecologically imperative and economically rewarding.

The main savings, says GPI, come from energy saved by using recycled materials instead of materials extracted from virgin resources, and from nearly doubling the lifespan of our remaining landfills. In addition, the new system creates employment worth up to $3.9 million a year, which in turn spins off other benefits valued at up to $3.7 to $5 million.

We also avoid some of the real, but uncounted costs of the old system. GPI reminds us of the problems of the old Sackville landfill, which stank, gassed, leaked, and supported a robust population of rats, not to mention 40,000 noisy, defecating gulls.

Eventually the Halifax Metropolitan Authority had to pony up $10.4 million to residents for "loss of quality of life and property values."

Our new system has conferred another benefit that is fiendishly difficult to quantify: demonstrating the value of a functioning democracy.

Nova Scotia’s success in managing its garbage comes from an exemplary planning process, in which the opinions of citizens were not merely tolerated, but solicited and respected. The strategy became their strategy, and when it was implemented they embraced it and defended it and made it work.

Now it is the envy of the nation, and every Nova Scotian is part of it.

How do we drive home the lesson of that process, and make democracy work for us in every important aspect of public policy?

While we’re figuring that out, we need to do better with solid waste.

For instance, we haven’t cracked the whip over businesses like Tim Horton’s and McDonald’s, who together account for fully one-third of all the litter in Nova Scotia - Tim Horton’s for 22 per cent, and McDonald’s for 10.1 per cent.

A major culprit is coffee cups, which can be made of compostable materials - as the Irving coffee cups are.

So what’s wrong with Tim Horton’s and McDonald’s? And what’s wrong with you and me? Why don’t we just carry our own friggin’ mugs?

We’re slipping collectively, too. Diverting 46 per cent of our solid waste from the landfills is admirable - but four years ago the figure was 50 per cent.

Nor have we tackled such tough issues as construction and demolition debris, which makes up roughly a quarter of the waste stream, or excessive packaging and hazardous household wastes.

Truly evaluated, more sustainable choices are more profitable choices.

We’ve done pretty well so far - but this report should motivate us to go a lot further.