Dear Editor:
Re: No real alternative to incineration: Mayor, Burnaby NOW, April 10.
Mayor Derek Corrigan has made several claims about a recent study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Wilderness Committee that are just not correct.
Corrigan says, "Those of us who have been working on this for many, many years find it frustrating when a group of academics come and simply dismiss all of the work that's been done."
The only part of this that is frustrating, Mayor Corrigan, is the fact that there is no incineration in Zero Waste! Yet you keep referring to your plan for incineration as "Zero Waste." You also refer to the report as coming from a "group of academics." Really?
As a former Teamster, a truck driver, a logger and an owner of a recycling facility in Gibsons, B.C., I was invited to participate in this study.
And as the representative for the Zero Waste International Alliance (www.zwia. org) and one of the founding members of Zero Waste Canada and a non-academic who worked collaboratively on the study, alongside union members and some academics, I do not know anyone who is advocating for 100 per cent recycling.
I invite you over to Gibsons to see an alternative to incineration that has not cost the taxpayers one penny to develop. We have been diverting waste and reusing materials captured from the waste stream for 11 years now. Barb and I just won the Best Green Business in B.C. from Small Business B.C. Mayor Corrigan, our door is open and you are welcome to view what an alternative to incineration looks like. End-of-the-pipe solutions encourage more wasting. I stand behind that statement!
Buddy Boyd and Barb Hetherington, Gibsons Recycling
