SWANA Day 2015 Agenda

Located in the Foyer of Pinnacle Room

Plenary Session – “Is your jurisdiction prepared for waste flow change and revenue loss? Are you coping with the Death Spiral?”

Throughout the province many solid waste managers are coping with lower waste tonnages and higher operational costs. Correspondingly, revenue streams are diminishing. Sometimes due to exchange rate issues relating to material and infrastructure costs as well as dropping material markets. As a result, there is concern with respect to:

•    Tip fee revenue loss due to waste export and a slow economic recovery
•    Revenue loss due to diversion goals (Zero Waste) and high tip fees
•    Increased costs of adding organics waste stream collection
•    Stagnation with respect to meeting program diversion objectives

What program changes do you foresee in your jurisdiction?

Keynote Speaker – Carey McIver, former Manager of Solid Waste, Regional District of Nanaimo (RDN), is a solid waste management specialist with over twenty-five years of hands-on experience designing, delivering, and evaluating plans, policies, programs and facilities for waste diversion, recovery and disposal.  She will utilize her extensive experience in BC to open our session and discuss continuing opportunities where the public and private sector both profit from various aspects of waste system operations. Carey will give her opinions and predictions on how to “moderate the death spiral” of increasing costs and lower revenues.

Speakers:

• Russ Smith, Senior Manager, Environment and Waste Resource Management, Capital Regional District. Russ will address challenges on Vancouver Island with respect to expanding involvement in stewardship programs, declining waste tonnages and related drops in revenue and the decisions needed in order to finance an increasingly complicated regional solid waste management system.
• Paul Henderson, General Manager Solid Waste, Metro Vancouver. Paul will provide an update on Metro Vancouver’s changes to the tipping fee structure following the Minister of Environment’s rejection of Bylaw 280 in the fall of 2014.
• Tara Friesen, P.Eng., Manager of Environmental Services, Chilliwack. The City of Chilliwack owns the Bailey Sanitary Landfill, which has experienced significant fluctuations in incoming waste quantities in recent years. Tara will share her experience with their current landfill-solid waste programs and their viability into the future.
• Robyn Cooper, Manager of Waste Reduction & Recovery, Sunshine Coast Regional District. Robyn is also a Board member of RCBC and will enlighten us with her regional district perspective on meeting SWMP targets and challenges in her jurisdiction, including preserving landfill capacity while facing increases in tonnages and costs.
• Ken Muller is the MOLO trained Solid Waste Supervisor for Kelowna’s Glenmore Landfill. He will outline the growing self haul waste import the landfill is experiencing along with how waste revenues are redistributed to general taxation to benefit all taxpayers.

Ministry of Environment Program Updates

Key MOE staff members will provide an update on existing programs and regulations including the “Landfill Criteria for Municipal Solid Waste” guidelines and proposed updates to the guideline for preparation of regional solid waste management plans.

• Natalia Kukleva, Environmental Management Officer
• Rebecca Freedman, Senior Policy Analyst
• Sonya Sundberg, A/Manager, Clean Communities

Plenary Session – “Industry’s perspective on waste flow dynamics in a changing economy”

In 2014 waste was flowing out of the province to lower cost landfills in the USA. Today we have the volume back but the revenue is still low. The economy has slowed resulting in lower waste production and correspondingly lower revenue (and the Can $$ is at a disadvantage). How is the private sector coping with their collection, processing (operations) and resale of materials?

This facilitated session will have each panelist describe their business and the current issues they are facing along with their opinion on the future of their industry in these changing times.

• Emmie Leung, CEO, Emterra Environmental
• Dan Lantz, Chief Operating Officer, Green by Nature EPR
• Tom Land, President & General Manager, Ecowaste Industries