Weekly newsletter: June 17, 2025
Hi everyone!
Wow, spring is flying by… the summer solstice is at 10:41 pm this Friday, June 20!
This week’s newsletter is a single topic long read on the future of our waste management.
Waste management options
What happens after the municipal landfill reaches capacity?
At today’s Environment and Climate Change Committee meeting, City staff presented an early feasibility study on waste disposal options after the municipal landfill at Trail Road reaches capacity.
Opened in 1980, the landfill initially had a 20-year service life until 2000, but new recycling and waste diversion/reduction programmes extended its life by many years. The success of those programmes is highlighted by the fact the landfill did not need an expansion until 2007.
Landfill capacity in Ontario is approved by the provincial government based on the contours of the site. Of its 16.9 million cubic metres, the landfill has about three million cubic metres in unused capacity left. Based on current usage, the landfill is projected to reach capacity in the mid-2030s.
As the journey from decision to operation of a new waste disposal facility averages 10 to 12 years in Ontario, now is the time to decide Ottawa’s garbage future.
Given the volatility of project timelines and a general desire to further extend the landfill’s life by as much as possible, a few measures were introduced to provide some extra manoeuvring room:
Feasibility study and environmental assessment of further expanding the landfill within its current footprint
Implementation of the three-item limit (more on this at the end)
Banning non-residential waste at the landfill
Arrangements to send one-third of our annual residential waste to local private landfills starting next year
Later this year, Council will also be updating the parks waste strategy, which we expect to include the formalisation and expansion of the three-stream programme to most parks in the City (it’s officially still a pilot programme).
However, a long-term solution is still required.
As directed by Council last year, staff began a feasibility study and business case for waste management technology solutions. The solutions must be available, proven, meet/exceed environmental regulations, and align with the Solid Waste Master Plan’s↗ goals.
The exercise included a triple bottom line evaluation of environmental, social, and financial considerations of each option. Early discussions with the province also took place to ensure their considerations are incorporated.
Five options were presented:
Status quo and private facilities – continue to use landfill until it reaches capacity, then use private landfills
Waste-to-energy incineration – new facility to process all non-diverted waste with energy recovery
Mixed waste processing – new facility that sorts waste to recover additional recyclables and organics
Mixed waste processing plus waste-to-energy – a facility that sorts out recyclables and organics, with the remaining waste incinerated for energy recovery
New landfill – new facility after Trail Road reaches capacity
Option 1 – Status quo and private facilities
In our first option, the City would continue to use the Trail Road landfill until it reaches capacity. Shortly before that, a long-term agreement would be negotiated with one or multiple private landfill operators in and around Ottawa.
Such an arrangement assumes private landfills in and around Ottawa have the capacity and lifespan to accept our residential waste long-term.
Landfill capacity across Ontario is expected to become extremely limited or depleted in the next 10 years unless additional capacity is approved by the province, which could lead to increased demand and competition from other communities in Eastern Ontario. That, in turn, could lead to higher (or unpredictable) fees to use those private landfills.
Currently, only two of four landfills in Eastern Ontario have available capacity, are operational, and are approved for residential waste, the Waste Management facility near Carp, and the GFL facility near Casselman. Both were recently approved for expansion and have expected lifespans of 25 and 10 years, respectively.
City staff note the primary risk of this option is the unpredictability in cost and long-term capacity due to potential competition with other communities.
Option 2 – Waste-to-energy incineration
Traditional mass burn incineration is the dominant waste-to-energy technology for medium to large-scale facilities around the world. There are five incinerators in operation in Canada, including two in the Greater Toronto Area.
In incineration, latent heat from combusted waste is used to generate steam. The steam can be used directly for heating and industrial purposes or passed through a turbine-generator to create electricity.
The facility is fitted with extensive gas treatment systems to capture and reduce emissions to meet stringent environmental and regulatory standards required by the province for their operation.
City staff estimate that an incinerator could divert 77 per cent of the 225,000 tonnes of garbage currently going to the Trail Road landfill annually.
Unsurprisingly, the primary risk of this option is cost. Based on other recent incinerator projects, the capital cost of a facility could range from $497 million to $862 million, plus an average of $47 million in annual operating and maintenance costs.
However, opportunities exist for waste-to-energy incinerators to offset some annual operating and maintenance costs. Most notably, electricity generation and the sale of metals extracted from the combustion process can recover an estimated $18 million annually.
The thermal energy could also be used in a district energy system to heat nearby buildings, resulting in potential additional annual revenue of about $20 million based on current rates. The feasibility of a district energy system would be depending on where the incinerator is ultimately located.
There are also opportunities to import garbage from other communities and the non-residential sector, including from Québec. Interestingly, Québec bans the import of garbage from Ontario (implemented when Toronto’s landfill reached capacity in the 2000s), but no such reciprocal ban exists.
Post-incineration ash can also be used in asphalt mixtures as a partial replacement for natural aggregates.
Although an incinerator itself emits more pollution than a well-managed landfill, the downstream benefits of added waste diversion, electricity generation, and opportunities to recover marketable material are equal or greater offsets.
Plus, its primarily indoor operation will minimise or eliminate the common community impacts of open-air landfills.
Minimal landfill space would still be required for some residual post-incineration materials and bulky items rejected from incineration.
Option 3 – Mixed waste processing
Using mechanical and manual labour, mixed waste processing facilities recover and divert recyclables and organics. Material is separated and transported for recycling, composting, or to the landfill.
Staff estimate the cost to build a mixed waste processing facility to be $97 million to $168 million, plus an average of $70 million in annual operating and maintenance costs.
While some of the annual costs can be offset through the sale of recyclable and organic material, the estimated annual cost recovery is just $4.4 million.
Additionally, mixed waste processing is mostly beneficial in communities where all materials are placed in one stream.
Considering the City already has longstanding recycling and composting programmes, mixed waste processing is estimated to divert just eight per cent of waste currently destined for the landfill.
Option 4 – Mixed waste processing plus waste-to-energy
This option combines the previous two.
Collected material arriving at the hypothetical facility would proceed through mixed waste processing to extract recyclables and organics. The remaining material would then be incinerated (both processes explained in previous sections).
A combined mixed waste processing and incinerator would maximise waste diversion and potential cost recovery. Co-locating the two technologies within the same facility or property can also reduce operational costs.
City staff estimate the capital cost of this option to be $556 to $965 million, plus $73 million in annual operations and maintenance costs.
Although this option would divert 79 per cent of waste destined for landfill, the most of all the options, it is just two per cent higher than the incineration-only option.
Option 5 – New landfill
Landfilling remains the most widely used waste disposal method globally. In this fifth and final scenario, the City would purchase a parcel of land large enough for a landfill to begin operating after Trail Road reaches capacity.
Note: even with incineration and/or mixed waste processing, some landfill capacity will still be needed.
Modern landfills are heavily regulated by provincial environmental regulation, which includes design criteria for base liners, leachate management, and landfill gas collection.
Robust regulations, engineering, and care reduces emissions and environmental impacts on groundwater, surface water, and air, but their outdoor operation means odour, noise, and dust will be inevitable.
Although a new landfill does not have any waste diversion potential, captured landfill gases can be used to generate electricity or as natural gas. At the Trail Road landfill, 85 to 90 per cent of methane is captured and reused.
City staff estimate the capital costs of a new landfill to be $439 million to $761 million, plus $16 million in annual operating and maintenance costs. A gas capture system adds $45 million to $60 million in capital costs and $2 million in annual operating costs.
From the captured gas, staff estimate electricity generation could yield $1-2 million annually versus about $12 million from the sale of natural gas.
Evaluation
Each of the five options were scored based on various environmental, social, economic/financial, and technical requirements:
Environmental – energy recovery, landfill diversion, marketable materials, emissions, greenhouse gases
Social – community support, visual impact, nuisance, transportation, property values
Economic/financial – capital, operational, and maintenance costs, and overall financial feasibility
Technical – complexity, timing potential, scalability, technology reliability, site requirements, regulatory requirements, potential complexity of contracts
City staff also evaluated each option’s potential regulatory process and timeline, outside funding opportunities, and project delivery.
The waste-to-energy incineration and status quo options scored the highest. Combined mixed waste processing and incineration scored third highest, followed by mixed waste processing only, while a new landfill scored the lowest.
Now, it’s time for Council to choose a direction for staff to finalise a business case for the future of Ottawa’s waste management. This is what was discussed and voted on at Environment and Climate Change Committee today (and Council next week).
Thoughts and preference
In past newsletters (which I don’t expect anyone to remember, since they were from mid-2023 and mid-2024), I shared my preference for mixed waste processing and waste-to-energy incineration. That position has since changed to incineration only.
Whatever we choose will come with a hefty price tag, but the cost recovery, revenue, and environmental potential of an incinerator makes it the best choice. Incineration also gives our garbage extra lives as electricity, fuel, and even in asphalt.
To be fair, early incinerators were dirty, polluting factories, but technology and environmental care has evolved over generations, and they have given way to modern incinerators, which adhere to much stricter environmental standards of our time.
Waste-to-energy has been used in several European countries (since some people seem to love using Europe as a baseline) after untreated wastes were banned from landfills around the new millennium.
Zurich, Switzerland’s incinerator, is just two and a half kilometres from its city centre!
Incineration is not a lazy way out. It does not mean an end to sorting out recyclables and organics from garbage, nor does it mean we should become a more wasteful society. The good habits most people have developed need to be maintained to reduce the amount of new material entering the production cycle.
Three-item garbage limit
On a related note, I had an interesting conversation about the potential opportunity to revisit the three-item garbage limit if Council ultimately chooses incineration.
Most of the feedback I have received is concentrated around last year’s implementation, but I’ve also received enough resident feedback since then to know it’s an unpopular policy for various reasons.
For one, most households already produce less than three garbage items every two weeks, but the hard limit penalises households that find themselves in need of extra capacity occasionally. It’s also led to an increase in illegal dumping at parks, commercial plazas, and bus stops.
I’m not opposed to revisiting the topic, so I’ll try to fit it into the discussion at Committee and see where I can go from there!
Also, we have a new Council colleague! Congratulations to Isabelle Skalski on her successful by-election campaign to become Osgoode Ward’s new Councillor-elect.
Wishing you a great week ahead, stay hydrated!
-Wilson