f ECCO’s materials-recovery operation is permanently lost, the construction and demolition material it handles will not disappear. It will have to be transported to other recycling facilities or disposed of at public or private landfills.
The immediate effects may be felt first by builders, renovators, demolition contractors and waste haulers through longer trips, fewer disposal choices and potentially higher transportation and processing costs. Over time, those costs can be passed through to homeowners, businesses and purchasers in the cost of construction, renovation and demolition work.
There may also be longer-term consequences for regular taxpayers. When recyclable construction material is placed in a City landfill, it uses limited public landfill capacity that must eventually be replaced or expanded. Landfill cells, roads, environmental controls, monitoring systems and future closure obligations are costly public infrastructure. Private-sector facilities that recover usable material can help extend the working life of public landfills and defer some of those future costs. The effect may not appear on an individual tax bill immediately, but the loss of local diversion capacity can contribute over time to greater pressure on municipal waste infrastructure, operating budgets and user fees.
Depending on available capacity and the location of alternative facilities, the broader effects could include:
- More construction and demolition material being disposed of rather than recovered.
- Greater demand on Calgary’s public landfills and other regional waste facilities.
- Faster consumption of existing landfill capacity.
- Longer hauling distances and additional truck traffic.
- Higher transportation and disposal costs for Calgary businesses and their customers.
- Additional fuel use and associated greenhouse-gas emissions.
- Loss of local employment, recycling expertise and private-sector infrastructure.
- Reduced capacity to convert suitable residual material into low-carbon fuel.
- A more difficult and potentially more expensive process for stabilizing, closing and reclaiming the existing landfill.
Environmental solutions often provide benefits gradually rather than producing an immediate, visible result. Extending landfill life, keeping recyclable materials in circulation and developing lower-carbon alternatives can take years to influence municipal costs or emissions. That does not make those benefits less important. Calgarians who want meaningful environmental progress should expect practical systems to exist for sorting, processing and finding new uses for material that would otherwise be buried.
The scale of these effects should be assessed using current operating volumes, customer information, alternative-facility capacity, hauling distances and the amount of material ECCO actually diverts. ECCO believes these consequences should be properly understood before Calgary permanently loses an established materials-recovery operation.