Online Town Hall

Construction of Guelph’s new organic waste processing facility could get underway as early as this fall, after Guelph City Council selected Maple Reinders to design and build the facility at last night’s Council meeting.

Maple Reinders presented its proposal to design and build a new organic waste processing facility using in-vessel tunnel composting — a process whereby organic material is completely sealed inside a concrete container as it decomposes.

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Earlier this month I joined six other city councillors to spend the morning working with our staff at the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) sorting Guelph’s garbage. What an eye opening experience it was!

The idea was originally conceived as an opportunity to provide a show of support for our hard working employees at the MRF, however the experience also gave us all first hand knowledge and understanding of some of the issues we face in improving our waste diversion targets for the City.

At the beginning of the shift we were teamed up with a buddy, an experienced employee we would work beside to learn the ropes. My buddy was fantastic, he not only showed me how to do the work but he shared with me his values and philosophies about waste and recycling.

I’m not sure I expected deep philosophical discussions working along the garbage line, however – I quickly found out that a lot of my initial expectations were misguided.

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A number of years ago my father and I sat at the kitchen table deep in thought. We had come to an impasse with the design of a piece of equipment we were developing. For months we had tried different alternatives, each one falling short of achieving our objective.

And so we sat there, staring at our prototype on the kitchen table.

My mother walked up and having no involvement in the project whatsoever took one look and said, “Why don’t you try….” and with that one naive comment she had solved the problem. I learned a very important lesson that day and it was perhaps because of that experience that I rejected a million-dollar proposal to solve our glass recycling system.

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The Mercury called him an “Earth Day Hero!”

Ward 4 resident, Josh Cameron started the annual Castlebury Park Cleanup when he was only four years old because he was tired of seeing trash around his neighbourhood. This year the efforts of the 11 year old were assisted by almost two dozen volunteers who came out to clean up The West Silver Creek all the way from Castlebury Park to the West End Community Centre.

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